


I Want To Be Your Canary

by MirrorDaltokki



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adaar (Dragon Age) Backstory, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Awkward Conversations, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Chivalry, Comments contain Spoilers, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Emotional Support Horse, Established Relationship, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Romance, Horses, Inquisitor (Dragon Age) is not the Protagonist, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Mage-Templar Dynamics (Dragon Age), Magical Accidents, Magical Realism, Military, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, On Hiatus, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Politics, Protagonist Is Having A Bad Time, Self-Harm, Tags Contain Spoilers, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Transformation, Trypophobia, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 63,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26834173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorDaltokki/pseuds/MirrorDaltokki
Summary: Her name is Caroline, picture-perfect Caroline with her storybook romance, and she is not the hero of this story.For once, her best friend Jane Smith takes the stage, and oh how she regrets it.The world ended with a bang and left Jane to reap the consequences. Stuck in a world she doesn't understand and doesn't belong to, Jane finds herself irrecoverably altered by the experience. Cursed with magic she can't control, she aligns herself where her new powers will do some good.At least, they would do some good if she could get a handle on them.Maybe she'll just stick to taking care of the horses.[On hiatus.]Beta and dialogue assist courtesy of AO3's very own createdtowrite and borichu.
Relationships: Male Adaar (Dragon Age)/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 314
Kudos: 153





	1. Always the Bridesmaid

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what I'm doing. For some reason, I had a deep need for magic gone wrong. And, as per usual, a ridiculously normal character who has no business being stuck in this situation.
> 
> Look. Gonna be blunt. This is a magic accident, it's kind of gross because I had a terrible thought about magic and here we are.
> 
> This has been sitting in my documents folder for... I don't know how long and screw it, gonna let it see the light of day. And no, no Final Fantasy was involved in the production of this madness.

They say that being a hero in your own story meant being the villain in someone else’s. That all worked out for most people, but she never wanted to be the main character in her own story. She was content with being in the background, kept her head down, and her nose out of other people’s business. Jane wasn’t the brightest or the strongest, not the fastest or the wisest. She was quiet and respectful, didn’t argue with her elders or her peers. She was just the right amount of friendly to be known by name by just a few people. Her voice wasn’t particularly melodic or screeching, her hair and clothes modest and only a few years back in fashion. If anything she was average in every way that mattered save for one.

Jane was good at blending in. She liked to think she wasn’t the hero in her own story, simply the supporting character in someone else’s.

That someone was her best friend.

They were the opposites in every way; where Jane was plain, Caroline was flashy. Where Jane was quiet, Caroline was loud. Jane Smith and Caroline Devereaux had been friends since kindergarten and had been considered by most adults to have been thick as thieves. In truth, Caroline liked bossing people around and Jane just didn’t know how to tell Caroline no after so many years of saying yes. It got to the point that people used Jane as a messenger to get to Caroline or faked being friends with Jane so as to get in Caroline’s good graces.

College was supposed to have been a saving grace, but Caroline made sure Jane applied to the same schools. It wouldn’t do to have them break up, what with Caroline’s cheerleading scholarship and Jane’s amazingly average scores. It wasn’t like they weren’t truly friends, simply that Jane’s boundaries were nonexistent when it came to Caroline. And when they graduated, they gravitated together still.

Jane was the maid of honor at Caroline’s wedding, a task she found both terrifying and easy at the same time. The bachelorette party was simple to plan, and what input she gave on the wedding itself was born of years of companionship. Caroline would wed the love of her life, and Jane would be left behind.

Such was the nature of the events to transpire, and Jane itched to kick off her dainty kitten heels and run screaming into the woods over how very wrong it all felt. Who would tell pushy men to get away from her now? Who would be there at two in the morning to giggle secrets into her ear? Who would practice her makeup skills on her face and then proclaim her beautiful beyond compare?

Caroline had William now, and she didn’t need Jane. They would have beautiful children together, and maybe sometimes Jane would be asked to watch over them. But Jane would be alone for the first time in forever, and she wasn’t sure she liked the thought.

It was with that in mind that she strayed from the venue’s garden path, a full glass of champagne in one hand and her cute kitten heels in the other. The path was well lit with little solar lights that looked like lanterns with flat black tops, a touch Jane had been proud to make at the time and considered wonderfully useful then. She had come to hide from Caroline’s well-meaning advances, the same kind that had tried to pair Jane with any of William’s college friends. And so she made her way as stealthily as she could to the center of the little garden, trying to hide under the great boughs of a lonely weeping willow.

And the little tufted titmice that called the tree home whistled peter-peter-peter in the growing dusk, rustling their wings as they settled down for the night. Jane wished she could be like those titmice, tiny little birds without a care in the world.

Instead, she was a mouse of a woman with so many cares she could drown in them, couldn’t fly away from all her problems even if she tried. Caroline didn’t need her, and Jane was left adrift on a tide of emotions and a fate out of her control. It was as if the universe itself laughed at her plight.

She managed to pick her way across the grass lawn, held the edge of her salmon pink bridesmaid dress out of the sprinkler created dew. Her nylons were beyond saving, not after traipsing about the venue with her shoes off. Something about dirt and concrete just wore holes in the bottom of the thin material. Said shoes were held loosely between her fingers, and she took a moment to set her champagne flute down on the bench beneath the weeping willow.

It could have been picturesque if it wasn't for the mousey brown mess atop her head that was what remained of a French braid after an hour of vigorous dancing with friends of the groom. The salmon pink of her dress stood out amongst the greenery and made for a pleasant spring color palette that Jane had been delighted to use. A spring wedding was much better than Caroline's initial summer extravaganza, and Jane was all the happier to not sweat her way through the ceremony.

She settled down on the bench with a sigh before sipping delicately at the champagne she hadn't wanted before one of William's friends had pressed it upon her. Jane was fairly certain that he had some nefarious plans for her person, and had excused herself from the celebration before Caroline could catch her. She took another sip before she ruefully poured it out on the trunk of the tree.

Screaming was the first clue she had that something was wrong. The bright flash of light, sickly green, and jarring against the North Carolina dusk was her second clue. And as she turned to see what had caused such a commotion the sky flashed bright once more, pulsating like a diseased heartbeat. Then came the worst part: the silence. Like a switch, the screams in the distance cut off with an ear-popping sense of finality, and she could see the glowing green spreading across the sky like spilled ink.

She jolted to her feet with a gasp of horror, champagne flute shattering on the ground as she tossed it aside in favor of trying to run back towards the wedding party before the green glow could reach them. Jane didn’t know what she was going to do once she got there, but she knew Caroline and William would need her help. 

Caroline always needed Jane’s help, and this strange green light was no exception.

Or at least she tried to run back, shoes in hand and dress dragging across the grass. The titmice in the weeping willow went peter-peter-peter in terror, shrill chirps of panic that pierced her ears. She dropped her shoes to clap her hands over her ears at the sudden raucous cacophony, wincing against the sudden wind that whipped the willow branches into a frenzy and blotted out the ever lightening sky. The wind howled and the birds shrieked, the lot of them trying to fly to safer perches in the whirlwind of branches and flying leaves.

A few of them got too close to the gusts, smacked so hard that Jane could only watch in horror as the titmice were blown into the trunk of the tree. The screaming winds grew worse as the green light pulsed, and Jane was forced to retreat to the tree trunk to avoid the lashing branches and the tiny bodies of birds who couldn’t withstand the struggle. One bird struggled mightily against the branches, panicked and whistling as it tried to fly back to its mangled nest in a crevice of the trunk for safety and its own shattered eggs.

The last thing Jane remembered was being hit in the head by the corpse of a titmouse, knocked back into the tree by the strength of the wind, and sudden, sharp stabbing pain in the back of her head. She held a hand to the back and it came away sticky with blood, both her own and that of the birds who had been smashed into the tree trunk. And the sky flashed green as the screaming started anew, and Jane knew the world would never be the same again.

_Run._

_Don't stop._

_Run._

_Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth._

_Feet to the ground, heart up in her ears._

_Don't stop to listen to the screams._

_Don't let them catch you._

_Run._

She woke in a crumpled mess of limbs and agony, every bit of her body screaming for her to lay back down and stop moving. But the sky was no longer green, the screams no longer reverberated through the night. Instead, the once quiet dusk had been replaced with a bright blue sky sometime in the middle of the day. Birds she didn’t know sang their songs, and there wasn’t a single weeping willow to be found in the area.

As she sat up, a pile of willow branches fell from her like nature’s own blanket. Jane had been surprisingly warm before, but as the branches fell from her she could feel an unseasonal bite of cold. It had been a pleasant spring day before the terrifying night, and now it felt like a cold autumn day. Time had slipped away while she was unconscious, and she winced as she placed a hand on her head. It came away with dry flakes of blood, which matched the reddish-brown on her palm from before. But still, her head felt tender, like she had been slammed into something hard enough to rattle her brain.

She brushed against something soft, and Jane had a feeling in her bones that some of the titmice had lost some feathers and fluff in the frightful night. There was something wrong with her ears, sacks of strange fluid covering the edges, and protruding beyond. Jane tried to get to her feet, her body still aching from whatever had happened last night.

But her body wouldn’t cooperate even as she struggled, and Jane was forced to stop and take stock of her condition before she tried again. The only parts of her that hurt were her arms, legs, back, hands, and her head; which might as well have been her entire body for how the pain radiated through her. Her fingers shook, covered in strange blisters that pulsed painfully with every heartbeat. The blisters spread from her nailless fingertips to the back of her hands in triangular shapes that ended in a massive protruding blister on the sides of her forearms and wrists. If she bent carefully without pulling the muscles of her back, the same thing could be said of her feet and legs, with the blisters shredding through the nylon of her stockings.

She winced and coughed at the feeling of something stuck in the back of her throat. The cough turned out to be a mistake, opening the floodgates as she vomited mushy chunks of warm and red something. Her bones ached the longer she vomited, and she felt lightheaded and dizzy when she finally finished. She heaved and heaved until the ground frothed into bloody mud, her breath catching as she cried and cried.

Jane couldn’t see her own back, but she had a feeling that the blisters were there as well, judging from the searing pain she experienced every time she moved too much or too quickly. She didn’t know what kind of tornado or natural disaster caused wounds like that so quickly, but she had a strange feeling like she had maybe been struck by lightning at some point from hiding under the tree. Her headache was easy enough to understand: smacking her head into the tree trunk hadn’t been the most pleasant experience of her day. Jane wasn’t sure why the sides of her head hurt as well, but she assumed it was from laying on the ground for however long she had lain there.

Thus apprised of her condition, she carefully tried to rise without using her toes or the muscles of her back, a task that was far more complex than she anticipated. She panted with the exertion as she tried to use her elbows to turn over and push herself to the balls of her feet. Jane had no idea of how long she struggled, but eventually, she managed to push the remaining willow branches from her and get to her feet. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective and that was what mattered.

She opened her mouth to try to call out and almost burst into tears. Her lips formed the shapes of the sounds she wanted, but the only sound that came out was a strange warble that she didn’t mean to cause. Any other time she would have called it a strange bird call, but this was her voice and she knew what she was supposed to sound like.

This was not it.

She tried to compose herself and try again, but the only sounds she could produce were through a combination of strange lip and tongue movements that weren’t the sounds she was used to in the slightest. Even her coughs sounded shrill to her ears, and if she pulled her head up and coughed it came out as a strange hiccuping wail.

She coughed an awful lot as she made her way through the clearing she found herself in, wincing as she tottered her way across the soft grass. Jane was surprised to find that she could walk almost silently, if you ignored the coughing, as she made her way down the winding path. Slow-moving as she was, Jane gained confidence in her stride as she meandered her way to somewhere.

Jane was not an idiot enough to think this was the same North Carolina garden she had passed out in, but she had hopes that whoever had moved her after the disaster would be at least nearby. Maybe they could explain what had happened, where Caroline and William were, or what was wrong with Jane.

Or maybe, if she was lucky, they could take her to a hospital so she could get checked out. Jane was fairly certain that she, at the very least, had a concussion of some degree that needed looking at. She winced again, unable to resist the urge to rub her bare arms against the cold. Whatever was left of the mangled remains of her bridesmaid dress did little against the chill, and she had lost her shoes sometime during the… whatever that was.

There was a man at the bottom of the path staring at her, slack-jawed as she made her way towards him. Jane was slightly offended, for she didn’t exactly mean to look like a natural disaster had fallen on her. She hadn’t wanted it, it had just happened that way. He said something she didn’t quite catch, a guttural series of words that she hoped meant that he was asking if she was all right.

She shivered, skin prickling with the cold, as she came closer to him. He wore something straight out of a movie, a dark green scarf with an ensemble that would have made Robin Hood jealous. Jane didn’t know the words for what he wore, something like a heavy blouse underneath a jacket made of quilted fabric and patches of some kind of leather on the elbows. His pants were some shapeless material, sturdy-looking and rough about the edges, tucked into boots that laced in some strange fashion she wasn’t accustomed to.

He spoke again, his arms outstretched in a gesture that she took to mean he meant her no harm, hands empty of even the actual sword belted to his waist. Whatever he said was lost to her, her sudden relief at finding someone combined with the stress of the day overcoming her senses in a sudden rush.

She didn’t remember hitting the ground, but she must have.

How else would she explain the change from the wilds to a wood ceiling overhead, eaves creaking gently with the breeze? Jane woke again to find her blisters covered in crude bandages, her dress stripped from her person in order to access more of the blisters that covered her body. Her entire chest was bandaged, as were her arms, legs, feet, and hands. She would have felt self-conscious if it wasn’t for the strange numbing cold whatever medicine they had applied to her blisters caused. Finally, she could move, and move she did.

She threw the quilted blanket from her, buffeted by the sudden cold, and spurred onwards towards the foot of the bed where she could see a pile of what could only be what was left of her clothing.

Or at least she would have if it wasn’t for the sudden exclamation near her and hands pushing her gently back into bed. “Hush now, my child. You are nowhere near well enough to be out of bed yet.” The woman seemed like she was some kind of nurse or nun, what with her white dress and fancy manners. Jane made a sound halfway between a whistle and a grunt as she was manhandled back into bed, then handed a cup of something that smelled vaguely of mint.

Jane drank it, because who was she to question someone who was kind enough to take care of her in her time of need.

She didn’t remember much after that, a trend that was becoming disturbing and only a little bit distressing.

“-abomination! Just look at her, Revered Mother!” Jane woke again to shouting, shouting that was only a few feet from her bed.

“All of the Maker’s creatures are equal under his eye. Are you yet a Templar to determine if she is an abomination or yet some poor soul?” That voice was at least familiar to Jane as that of the woman who had pressed her back into bed and given her whatever had made her sleep so thoroughly. “For all we know, she is but a Dalish apostate!”

A new voice joined the cacophony, and Jane felt herself shrinking backward at the coldness in this new voice. “It remains to be seen. We have sent forth for a Templar to judge her, apostate, or abomination.”

“Or neither,” came another voice from beyond the door. “She could be neither apostate nor abomination, but some new thing.”

“And will you vouch for her then, Master Dennet?” So came the first voice, that of the one who called Jane an abomination, whatever that was. “Will you keep her here under your roof until we can be sure of what she is?”

The last voice spoke again, gruffly and deftly cutting off the murmur of protest from all the other voices. “The way I see it, she’s some poor victim of the rift up the hill, and those wounds came from her escape.”

At last, she peeked out from beneath her eyelashes, blurrily making out the shape of the man who had first encountered her on the path. He was an older man, darker-skinned, bald-headed, and his beard gone snow white. He looked as if he could eat a man for breakfast, and she peeped in terror as he looked at her with a frown. “There. Now you’ve gone and scared the poor girl.”

Jane scooted backwards on the bed, putting as much distance between her and the strangers as she possibly could. It wasn’t as if she wanted to be whatever an abomination or an apostate was, she was just some poor girl from North Carolina who ended up in some strange natural disaster and then ended up wherever this was. She shivered as the people stared, grabbing at the blanket to cover her shame. This wasn’t how her day was supposed to go.

If she had woken up in some stranger’s bed it should have been the result of an impressive amount of champagne and good, not as the result of something unfathomable and terrible.

The woman in white responded to Jane’s distressed peeps and whistles with a calming hum and her hands spread out in the universal sign for being harmless. “There, there now. You’re safe here, my child.”

Safety was relative when one man in honest to God armor stood there menacingly like cutting her head off would be the greatest accomplishment of his day. There was some strange pattern on the front of his breastplate, scuffed and worn from what she hoped was not actual combat but probably was. Jane was probably right in assuming this was the owner of the cold voice, his face creased with a heavy scowl. “We should just kill her and be done with it.”

The old man scoffed. “Don’t be daft. You want to kill a girl over some bits of fluff and pointy ears? Might as well kill all the Dalish while we’re at it. For all the good that would do you.”

Pointy ears? Jane’s hands, heavily bandaged as they were, rose of their own accord to the sides of her head. And there, nestled beneath the tangled mess that was her mouse-brown hair, were two points on suddenly longer than normal ears. Something was stuck at the ends, covered by ointment and sharp points sticking out of the much more malleable cartilage of her ears. She winced as her fingertips touched the tender flesh of the points of her ears, not surprised when her bandages came back sticky with ointment.

Whoever had bandaged her had taken the time to make sure all of her supposed injuries were either bandaged or at least covered with ointment. With the claims of her being either an apostate or an abomination, Jane was rather surprised that anyone had even bothered looking after her.

The old man grunted. “Is that all? I think we can take it from here, ser knight. I thank you for helping bring her in from the cold.”

Jane peeped as the man in armor so rudely shoved the old man aside with his shoulder on his way out the door. “This won’t be the last of this,” he growled as he slammed the door shut.

Apparently, the old man’s words had weight even with strange men in armor. How delightful, truly. What was more delightful was that the searing pain in her body was coming back, and there was the woman in white with another mug of that mint smelling drink. This time she had figured out that the minty stuff was what was numbing her injuries, injuries that had grown more painful over time, and she reached eager hands out for the carved wooden mug.

She could figure out what was going on once everything stopped hurting.

Only she wouldn’t figure it out that day, nor the next, nor the one after that. The woman in white had been replaced by the gruff old man, a kind old woman, and she felt cheated. Each day was drowned out by a misty haze of sleep and numbness until the minty liquid couldn’t stop the burn anymore.

Jane remembered waking once to the sound of a falcon screaming, the old man holding her hand with a thick leather glove as his wife ran a wet cloth over the blisters on her back. They were warm and wet, and she could feel this strange crick in her spine that she knew she could solve just by rolling her shoulders back and forward. But she couldn’t move, not the way she was held in place by the old man.

Everything about her life had melded together into a sea of mint and agony, fevered dreams about what had happened to Caroline and William, and the urge to move parts of her body that shouldn’t move. She remembered crying, a falcon screeching, and the inexorable feeling of her body being stretched out like bad taffy. There was a sick heat and sticky wetness from her blisters, and she just wanted to wriggle and writhe until she was back to normal.

The old man and woman had her laying on her stomach, her back exposed to the air as the strange blisters grew and grew. If she paid enough attention to the two when they spoke, there was something growing inside the blisters, something dark and foreboding. But according to the old man, there was nothing to worry about, at least not yet.

Jane woke once screaming, and this time she knew the falcon screeching was her. There was something moving on her back, no, inside her back. Something under her skin that wanted out and all she had to do was arch her back at just the right angle. There was some strange genetic prerogative ordering her to do just the right thing at the right time.

The skin split on the blisters on her back, some weird warm liquid gushing out and splattering across the sheets.

“Elaina! Bring some warm water! They finally split,” shouted the old man at the old woman, and Jane couldn’t do anything but freeze in place as the blisters on her back roiled and churned with whatever had grown inside of them. She could feel whatever it was struggling to break through the skin, and the lancing pain every time she breathed made her gag on her own tongue.

A stick was shoved between her lips and she bit down gratefully, screaming around it as the skin split and split until finally whatever it was burst forth in a spray of pus and blood. The things, once free from their skin sacs, flopped wetly around until they settled on her back with an itchy and prickling finality.

“Two down, four to go. You did good, kid.” The old man stroked at her hair in what was obviously meant to be some soothing gesture but only made her tense up all the more at the realization that she would have to experience the pain and sharp relief all over again.

The old woman returned with a pot and a couple of cloths, one of which she handed to the old man. “Maker be blessed, what in Andraste’s name… Are those… real?”

“Elaina, I think our guest here is more of a mystery than we thought she was.” The things flopped around in the palms of the elderly couple’s hands as they cleaned and cleared away at the gunk built upon the things.

She felt the pull on her muscles as the old man moved one of the things on her back, the skin tightening and relaxing with each movement. Whatever the things were, they were attached far into her body, and she wept at the thought. The old woman, Elaina, shushed her with a careful swipe of her cloth. “There now. Isn’t that much better?” Jane wanted to agree, but her mouth wouldn’t make the sounds she needed, so she resorted to whistling softly in agreement. Her back felt much better, less like a pair of hot pokers were being stabbed into the flesh between her shoulder blades. The things twitched and flapped, and Jane sobbed as the thought passed into her mind.

There was something growing out of her back in much the same way she had arms and legs. She could feel through whatever the things were like they had been there her whole life. Everything, from the swipe of the warm cloth on her body to the way the things flopped about as she tried to stretch them to be helpful for whatever the elderly couple was doing, could be felt as if it was her arm instead of whatever they were.

And if the things were ingrained that far, there was no chance of cutting them off without some rather significant pain and damage.

Pain and damage she would like to avoid at all costs.

But she was awake now, the worst of her fever having broken with the violent expulsion of whatever the things on her back were. “Maker’s Breath. What even are you, lass?”

She burst into tears because Jane didn’t know anymore.


	2. The Thing With Feathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanna know what's fun? Having a backlog so I can have real release schedules.
> 
> On that note.
> 
> "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all." - Emily Dickinson

The blisters on her body seemed to harden under the careful ministrations of the elderly couple, and Jane was deemed healthy enough to get out of bed. Her toes and fingers were bandaged, but Master Dennet seemed to think she was healthy enough to be put to work. Something about the sunshine and exertion being good for her health and an extra mouth to feed was no laughing matter in these trying times. Jane wasn’t about to disagree, especially as he and his wife were solely responsible for her continued survival.

Of course, the question of her abomination status had been summarily answered with the firm logic that they would revisit the idea whenever a friendly templar deigned to stop in the little village. There was enough death and madness outside in the world to last them a lifetime, and no one relished the thought of sacrificing some poor girl for a mindless fear no one could afford. For now, Jane offered no harm to anyone who resided at the little farm and thus would be treated as a guest until such time as she recovered enough to move on her own.

The fabric of her dress suggested that all was not as it appeared, and the strange young woman with her deformities was some sort of lady from where Dennet knew not. The material of her hose suggested disposable wealth, and the satin sheen to her pink dress spoke of nobility. Aside from her injuries, the young woman had clear skin, pale, and lacking any calluses that spoke of any kind of work. Her hair was soft and voluminous, sweet-smelling even through all the blood-caked against the back of her head.

If anything, someone would come by to collect the addled young noblewoman with her deformities and they would be done with it. In the meantime, she could be put to work helping with small chores around the farm and they would be done with her when her chaperone came to collect her.

And so Jane found herself holding a basket while an elderly woman slowly pointed out various parts on a plant and told her to pick only the leaves. Elfroot, as it was called, was only useful in pieces. Contrary to the name, the only part of any real use was the leaves. The root itself held hitherto unknown properties that Jane need not concern herself with. Not that she was called Jane.

“Here, girl. Take care that the leaves are full and flat, not curled like this one. The young leaves are nowhere near as potent.” Elaina, the old woman who dressed like she was thirty years too old to be at a medieval reenactment but somehow was a key figure, explained for the fourth time.

It wasn’t that Jane needed the reminder, not really. Her bandaged fingers simply couldn’t keep up with the movements she tried to force out of them, and she ended up nearly crushing the plants she was supposed to be gently cutting leaves from. She fumbled with the little knife she had been given, crouched down to avoid stomping any of the plants or bracing her knees against the ground.

Jane had been awake when her bandages were changed last, and what she discovered was enough to break her down into tears again. The blisters as she stubbornly called them, had begun to develop little holes with hard white and gray bits sticking out, some of them with stringy grey tips. Each blister tapered to a point on each limb, ending at her knees and elbows. For an added bonus, there was a large blister in the middle of her chest, tapering up on both sides of her neck to end right beneath her ears.

Now that she wasn’t on a constant liquid diet of minty tea and copious amounts of sleep, Jane had taken time to assess her situation. The skin on her blisters was still tender to the touch, and Jane desperately wanted to scratch until the itching stopped. She still wore bandages, for pus and blood tended to leak out of where the prickling bits jutted out. There was a weird lump under her throat that spread down to her clavicle, and her tongue felt fat in her mouth. Jane looked disgusting, like a bird that had just flopped out of the shell.

She felt disgusting, rooting around in the dirt like it was the solution to all of her problems. But those who didn’t pull their weight on a farm, out in the middle of wherever this was, didn’t get to eat. And Jane had a mighty need to eat at the strangest times.

So there she was, trying to balance a little knife in one hand and cradle a plant with the other. It was slow going, but the old woman was content to allow her time to accustom herself to her own body.

“There you go, girl. You’ll do just fine,” Elaina patted her on her head for her troubles, and Jane smiled up at the elderly woman. This was a simple enough task for her to do, so long as she didn’t overextend herself and tried twisting her back to do it. And as long as she didn’t think about the things growing out of her back that moved when she did, covered in little stringy sharp little things that she refused to admit were feathers, she would be fine.

Elaina washed her back every night, changing her bandages and applying new ointment to the blisters that festered on her body. Tactfully, neither the couple nor their daughter said anything about how hideous Jane looked as the spiky things grew and grew. Yet no one wanted to be the one to pluck the things from her body as they sprouted, and Jane lacked the dexterity and strength to do it herself.

Dennet said she looked like a chick, growing into her feathers in order to become a perfect hen. Or at least that was what Jane had gathered from eavesdropping when she was supposed to be asleep.

“Girl, come along. We’ve marks of daylight left, and I’ll not be wasting it waiting on you,” the elderly woman gently chided as she picked up the basket Jane had idly been stuffing leaves into. “We’ve enough elfroot for the liniment, now we’ve some spindleweed to gather.”

Whatever spindleweed was, Jane would happily accept a change of scenery after days of staring at the same spot on the cabin’s ceiling. She chirped gratefully, tried her best to shove all of her emotions into a series of sounds that made the old woman smile.

“Oh, you couldn’t be an abomination, sweet thing as you are. Look at you. You couldn’t hurt a fly.”

Jane turned to chirp her affirmation to the woman, trying her best to ignore the sick green color of the thing they called the Breach. The Breach in the sky, an apropos name for the giant hole that filled the horizon over the place they called the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Nestled deep in the Frostbacks, there had apparently been a Conclave called between the mages and templars that the elderly couple was certain she had been a part of.

They also thought she was some kind of useless child that had been sheltered all her life, in need of a firm hand and common sense guidance. There was no in-between, not when the elderly woman had to teach the girl how to use a chamber pot and bathe herself with a wet cloth. She hadn't known how to lace up the hastily cut tunic to cover her decency, nor did she know how to use a proper breast band. There had been many things the girl did not know.

Most importantly, she did not know how to function with the most mundane of chores that every Fereldan child knew how to do before they were the girl's size. Their daughter had known which end of a horse was safe to approach first before she had even entered the stable, but the girl had seen a horse and stared as if it wasn't real.

Jane knew this because she eavesdropped somewhat shamelessly instead of going to sleep. It was hard for her to keep farm hours, up before the sun and down while the sun was still up. So instead she listened to the soft sounds of everyone sleepily muttering in the house. Dennet and his wife liked talking about her before bed, murmuring their concerns to each other. Mostly they worried that a noble girl from somewhere would try to fight them on even the simplest things.

She didn't.

Instead, she volunteered to leave her sickbed and help in what ways she could. With her fingers bandaged like mittens and arms covered in ointment and stained bandages, it was only natural that she be set to make-busy work. Her body had yet to recover from her bone-deep fever, her head in the clouds as she felt light as a feather. Somehow the things on her back would jerk and twitch to every single emotion, and Jane was rapidly growing tired of the motions.

“Now, we have until the sun sets to gather as much spindleweed as we can. Come along now, girl, and let’s get you sorted.” Elaina was swift to brush the dirt from her dress, offered a hand down to help Jane up from her precarious squat. Jane accepted with a peep of gratitude, wiggling slightly to shake the dirt from her hands without brushing her bandages against each other.

Never in her wildest dreams did Jane think that farming of any kind would be something she would be doing for a living. Even more importantly, never did she think that riding horses would be something she did daily. But Master Dennet was firm on his opinions, and so she was now the proud caretaker of a sweet brown mare that had apparently been rescued from pulling carts for whatever a templar was. Jane called her Apple in her head where no one else could hear, but everyone else refrained from even giving the beast a name.

Master Dennet, as it turned out, was Thedas’ foremost expert in horses and everything to do with horses. His word was law around the little farm, and if he declared that his guest needed to learn the friendly end of a horse from the unfriendly end, then so shall it be. The mare at least was gentle, sensing something about Jane that gentled her further. Master Dennet told her that the beast of burden could smell how harmless the girl was and was adjusting accordingly.

And so Jane toddled her way over to the stables that took pride of place on the farm, an empty basket in her hands and Elaina’s worried face right behind her shoulder.

“We’re headed to the pond right on the outskirts. There shouldn’t be anything amiss, but if something goes wrong you get on that horse and ride back to the farm as quick as you can.” Elaina saddled the horse with practiced motions, slowing down so that Jane could watch and familiarize herself with the process of tying the empty baskets to the saddle. “I don’t expect any trouble out of either of you.”

This would be Jane’s first time riding Apple, and she expected it wouldn’t be the last. Jane chirped at the horse and watched her ears flick in her direction, Apple lurching forward with a quiet whicker. Elaina laughed and pointed at a convenient stump in the ground. “Go on now. On the beast with you.”

Jane was not and never had been the most graceful person in either of the Carolinas. If anything, Caroline had made her seem like a slow mouse in comparison to her majestic lioness. College and her actual job hadn’t required any more grace from her than what little she already possessed, and yoga had nothing on the art of horseback riding. So it was with a graceless fumble that Jane mounted Apple, her legs kicking out oddly from beneath her wide skirts and her toes curled to balance in the stirrups to avoid getting any of her bandages caught in the metal.

Apple pranced in place, ears flicking back and forth with annoyance as Jane settled herself on her back. Elaina held the reins with infinite patience, having taken it upon herself to train the girl in the basics of living on the little farm and hopefully retaining some of it when she went on her merry way to wherever she came from. The old woman was having the time of her life, remembering when Seanna had been small and fumbling on the back of the pony her father had acquired for her to learn the art of horses with.

Master Dennet believed in training the horse and the rider at the same time, and Elaina agreed. So it was with practiced hands that Elaina tugged on the reins and Apple obligingly stepped forward. It would be slow going with Jane perched on the horse’s back and swaying oddly with Apple’s gait. But she picked up the rhythm of it by the time the odd trio made it down the path leading up to the farmhouse. No one could say she looked particularly comfortable, but comfort would come with time and practice.

Elaina led the horse and her quasi-rider to a little pond past several now-empty houses. “Come on now. We’ve only a little time until the sun goes down and I’d like to have dinner started before then.”

Jane dismounted with even less grace than she had mounted, accepting Elaina’s hand as a bit of leverage to help her fall in a swirl of skirts and bandages. According to the knight with the steel in his voice and hate in his step, Jane had no need for such finery. But Elaina disagreed, spoiling the girl with a long tunic from Dennet and a veritable pile of skirts and other such garments from Seanna and Elaina both. Elaina was living vicariously through Jane and Jane knew it, was even willing to allow it so long as it didn’t cause a huge fuss around the farm.

Jane fumbled her way through untying a basket from the saddle, handed it off to Elaina with a smile. The old woman waited until Jane had her own basket before leading her to the pond. “Now, spindleweed has a spiky appearance. We use it for a lot of medicines, and it is a major component of the horse liniment we used to patch you up.”

The plant Elaina crouched down next to was a strange shade of red-orange, and there was an awful lot of it growing around the edges of the pond. Elaina wasted no time in pulling out her own little knife and pointing to various parts of the plant. “The same as elfroot, we want as much of the biggest leaves as possible. Cut it down close to the stalk and leave the youngest leaves to grow so they can be harvested again later.”

Jane fumbled with her knife, but soon she got into the mindless motions of pulling and cutting the leaves from the spindleweed. Spindleweed curled around her fingers, and she peeped along with the song Elaina sang as she cut.

Or at least that was the plan, soon interrupted by the growl of a beast across the little pond and down the way. Elaina gripped at her knife and reached a hand out get Jane’s attention. “Quickly now, gather up your skirts as best as you can.”

Elaina was a spry old woman when it counted, and she was quick to bodily throw Jane into the saddle and clamber up behind her. She snapped the reins and dug her heels in, and Apple bolted down the path with a wolf on her tail, throwing up clods of dirt and grass as she ran.

Jane screamed, the shriek echoing across the hillside and startling Apple into running faster. The two women managed to make it almost to the farm before the wolf snarled and turned tail itself at the sight of a man standing there with a naked sword in hand. Ser Norrit Fairfeld, first of his name and last of his family, had taken to prowling around the farm in hopes of persuading Master Dennet that he was worthy of one of Dennet’s famous horses.

Alas, the only thing Dennet thought Ser Fairfeld was good for was chopping wood and occasionally scaring off the rogue templar or mage that tried to force their way into the little farm. Ser Fairfeld remained ever hopeful, and it had been he who had carried Jane down from the path beyond the farm at Master Dennet’s insistence. And it was he who advocated for turning the abomination over to the templars at the earliest possible opportunity.

But still, a sword was normally a deterrent for intelligent beasts like the mages and templars had become, not for wolves. It spoke of a level of intelligence that frankly frightened Jane, and she sobbed in terror at her brief brush with something terrifying. It had happened in a single breathtaking instant, and Jane wasn’t sure how to handle the event.

She had a feeling she would dream of snapping teeth and the howl of a hungry wolf for ages to come, the pink of its tongue and the white of its teeth flashing as it leaped after Apple and her riders.

Ser Fairfeld grunted, his brown hair ruffled by the light breeze. He would have been an attractive man if it wasn’t for his near-permanent scowl and the scar that cut through one side of his mouth to the other in a crude Glasgow smile. Sheathing his blade, he reached a hand up to offer his assistance to Elaina in dismounting from Apple’s back but left Jane to figure out her own way to fumble off the horse’s back. His dislike of Jane was plain in how swiftly he snubbed her in favor of currying favor with the wife of Thedas’ greatest horse master. Jane knew perfectly well that he would throw her to the templars in a flash, not that she still knew what a templar even was.

All she knew was that Ser Fairfeld despised her and would see her dead if he could. It was a chilling thought, one Jane tried hard not to think about as she looked back over her shoulder to see the back end of a wolf slipping into the woods beyond the farm’s edge.

“Well, I don’t think those wolves will stop anytime soon,” Ser Fairfeld frowned as he looked where Jane’s attentions were. “Surely there must be someone we can reach out to in order to set up a hunting party to get rid of them. Someone that isn’t as mad as the bandits.”

Elaina reached her hands up to offer Jane a gentle lift down, somehow able to balance the younger woman’s weight with her own. It was always strange when the elderly couple could manhandle her in such a fashion but Jane was becoming accustomed to the sensation of weightlessness and no control of her own. “If there was anyone, they’d have to make it through that madness first. No one is foolish enough to fight a war just to help a little farm like ours. Come on girl, let’s get you looked at.”

Not even Elaina, with her spine of steel and no-nonsense methods, could come up with a real answer for Ser Fairfeld. Jane, for her part, simply peeped. She did a lot of peeping these days, as her ability to speak had somehow been robbed of her whenever the sky had turned that pulsating and sickening green. She still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from, and Jane was doing her best to take everything in stride.

Growing what appeared to be feathers from every limb was doing wonders for her ability to treat this as anything but a horrible nightmare. There was probably some metaphor or dream journal reason for why she was turning into a strange bird-woman. A harpy in all but name, it was probably supposed to mean that she wanted to fly away from her life and spread her wings far away from Caroline. Jane would be the first to argue the point, for she was fairly certain Caroline wouldn’t know exactly what to do without at least someone to hold her hand.

But Caroline had William now, and Jane had no one but herself to rely on. Maybe that was what the metaphor was supposed to be: the growth of her own story without the influence of Caroline and her friends. It was laughable, but maybe there was a chance that she could try something new. Of course, she would have to wake up first, but at least she had the overall reassurance that she couldn’t die. It just wasn’t the done thing, dying in dreams. If you died, you woke up.

Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to wake up just yet, because so far her dream had just been a horrifying amount of screaming and suffering. There had to be at least some sort of silver lining as to why she was having this particular dream in the first place. Normally she dreamed of work, mindless hours of typing in words she didn’t even recognize and transferring them from faded paper copies to a much needed digital backup. She had the beginning signs of carpal tunnel from the sheer amount of typing she did on a daily basis.

And here was a man who hated her, armed with a sword and wearing literal armor, watching her be led off into the farmhouse by a little old lady. He wanted nothing more than to see her handed off to the templars, and Jane was pretty sure that was another metaphor for how adventure lurked and she was just afraid of the consequences of spreading her wings and flying off.

If only her dreams could be more pleasant than her reality.

Elaina had led her into the kitchen while Jane contemplated her unnatural dream existence, bustled about the space, and stoked the fire. It would take some time for the flames to reach the optimal temperature, and in the meantime, Elaina wordlessly set a small knife and a pile of what looked like potatoes in front of Jane.

“Peel those for me, there’s a good girl.” Jane fumbled with the knife, but at least she understood the concept of peeling potatoes and didn’t need the process explained to her. Unlike most of the little chores Jane performed around the farmstead, helping in the kitchen didn’t need to be explained. She didn’t know how to cook with an open wood-burning flame, but she at least could cut and prepare vegetables for others to boil in stews and the like. So she scrubbed away at potatoes, washing off the dirt to leave the golden skin behind. Once the potatoes were clean, she proceeded to the minutiae of peeling and chopping to Elaina’s specifications.

They cooked in companionable silence for a while, and for a time it was good.


	3. Those We Meet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeey! We're back with another delightful edition of Jane's struggles.
> 
> Nothing to warn anyone for as we've moved past most of the hurdle.
> 
> "It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names."  
> — Yann Martel

Jane was growing tired of sleeping on her stomach, of the itching feeling of pus drying and her skin flattening oddly. The spiked and stringy parts emerging from her skin had begun to dry out as well, finally taking the form of what was certainly a span of feathers. Elaina took a great deal of pleasure out of washing the flopping things on Jane’s back, and Jane simply squinted her eyes and tried her best to control their flopping.

There was only so much she could do, but each day they flopped a little less awkwardly and a bit more when she wanted them to. After days of flapping and menial chores, Jane would have crowed with success if her vocal cords allowed her to. Finally, she was able to wiggle the left side to the point where she could see what the things even were.

The things that had grown out of the boils on her back looked like chicken wings, covered in grey fluff and short feathers that promised to grow into something more. Her dream was definitely a metaphor for freedom, one Jane wasn’t sure she didn’t really need to be explained to her. The backs of her hands were downy and soft, prickling in places like a baby goose. Elaina declared her to be healed enough to no longer require bandages on her neck and back after a few days, letting the sun and open air dry out what remained of her blistered skin.

She wasn’t sure if she liked the fact that she had wings now, some part of her subconscious miserable that they couldn’t at least be vividly colored like a peacock or some other fabulous bird. Instead, she got grey wings and a white throat, light grey feathers on her arms and legs, and the beginnings of talons growing from her fingers and toes. If she hazarded a guess, Jane would almost say she looked adorable.

If she wasn’t a hybrid human disaster, anyway.

Jane spent a tremendous amount of her time in the garden and helping around the farmhouse with the little chores Elaina deemed her recovered enough for. But most importantly, Master Dennet deemed her worthy of finally helping in the stables. Or at least, worthy of brushing horses for hours on end with supervision. Her fingers and toes hadn’t regrown their talons enough for her to be of use mucking the stables, but without the bandages, she was capable of much more dexterous movements.

Apple had never looked shinier, her coat fully groomed and wiped down with a soft cloth. The former carthorse looked like a show pony under Jane’s care, and Master Dennet simply barked more orders at Jane.

Master Dennet was a strict taskmaster, but a kind one nonetheless. Each barked order was accompanied by gentle hands demonstrating the task at hand, soothing so as not to cause the horses to balk. Jane appreciated the attention he gave her, the knowledge on how to at least manage the basics of horse care.

Not that she could trim a hoof, but at least she knew how to sit in a saddle without being thrown off her placid mount. She would never be a fantastic rider, but she would at least be decent enough for Dennet to give her his approval to ride a carthorse off the farm. If she even could leave the farm with the wolves milling about the paths and the mage-templar war right over the bridge.

Ser Fairfeld had been instrumental in negotiating for the farm’s continued peace and quiet. Master Dennet had long ago supposedly given up his best horses in the service of Redcliffe Castle, and the little farm had nothing of true value left to take. What little food they had was well hidden, and the only real horses left were of the sort that no sane man wanted to ride. And then there was Apple, with her vacant stare and boney back. Apple wasn’t the best of horses, but she was considered to be placid enough that Jane could learn how to take care of a proper horse with.

It was just too bad that Jane had grown attached to the beast. A supposed noblewoman such as herself should have known how to at least sit a horse in a more ladylike fashion than Jane defaulted to, but Jane should have known how to ride a much more dignified animal. Master Dennet was a firm believer in allowing her the chance to determine her own mount and Jane appreciated it immensely.

What Jane did not appreciate was the way that Ser Fairfeld looked at her when no one was watching. His stare made her feel unclean and like so much chopped meat before his hungry gaze. She avoided him as much as she could, an impressive feat for such a small farm, but still, she could feel him watching over her shoulder. He was waiting for proof of her status as an abomination, proof she didn't even know how to give him.

It was a quiet life, one she could happily grow accustomed to dreaming about if it wasn't for the looming presence of Ser Fairfeld.

But all good things must come to an end, and what an end it was.

She woke in the morning as was usual, the predawn gloom broken up by the light of the fireplace. Seanna had been up for at least an hour before everyone else, stoking the fire and setting out what amounted to breakfast on the farmstead. Bread baked days prior, lightly toasted and buttered with a bit of bacon fat. There was cheese, some questionable yellow thing that crumbled at the edges and wasn’t quite cheddar, sliced thick and hearty to be placed on top of the thinly sliced brown bread. Wheat wasn’t in plentiful supply, and white bread was right out of the question, but a hearty rye and oat bread was something the little farm could produce for breakfast each morning.

As the sun began to peek its way over the hills, something about the dawn was different. Somehow more ominous than any of the previous mornings, Jane spent a fair part of her morning with her eyes watching the little patch that led up to the farm. Something was strange and she could feel it down to her very bones. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, let alone give it a name, but there was something about the air that ruffled her newly grown feathers and made her feel like she was on the precipice of something awe-inspiring. Like the calm before the storm, the farm was hushed and subdued as the sounds of fighting echoed over from the pass.

“Come inside, girl. Away from the door. There’s a good girl.” Dennet beckoned to her from inside the farmhouse, Elaina had already moved towards the larder to make space for their questionable guest.

Elaina gently guided Jane from the door to the larder, pressing her inside. “Not a peep out of you, girl. You stay right here until we know it’s safe for you.” Jane chirped, the closest she could come to asking a question, with her head tilted in an indication that she had a concern that could not be expressed. Elaina sighed. “If it’s bandits, there’s nothing to stop them from taking you. Ser Fairfeld and Bron can only stop so much, and you’re a rare prize.”

“We can’t stop them from abducting you and ransoming you off to your family, girl. The best we can do is hide you. Maker knows the last thing we need is to lose a noblewoman too sick to talk.” Dennet motioned towards the larder with his chin. “In you get, girl.”

At any other time, Jane would be offended that someone considered her so useless that she needed to be hidden in the basement. But there was Bron with his sword and Ser Fairfeld bringing up the rear with his own blade. Neither of them looked as if they would take no for an answer, looking down upon her with hardened scowls on their faces. Bandits for a farm this size meant serious business, and some part of Jane knew that there was a danger even in dreams.

She still didn’t understand what they meant when they called her a noblewoman. If it had been Caroline in the dream, with her gleaming golden hair and smile that could charm the birds from trees, then Jane could understand it. But from the beginning, Elaina and Dennet had treated her like some foreign lady. Out of place and time, lost on the road of life and dropped into their lives like a strange gift from the Maker. Something had cracked in the world and let her through, and Jane was lost and adrift without Caroline to ground her.

Hers was a strange dream, filled with birdsong and pain. She didn’t even think you could feel pain in a dream, just the thought enough to wake you up. It was like riding a rollercoaster leading up to the drop, the adrenaline and suspense keeping her true to the course. She felt like a passenger in her own body, somewhere behind and to the left.

Something terrible was coming, and the things on her back twitched and fluttered with every desperate peep she couldn't stop herself from uttering. This was wrong, all wrong. Something was coming, something that gripped her heart with terror and made her blood run cold. It wasn't right, made every inch of her skin prickle with goosebumps. Larger and larger it swelled, crept up on her while she struggled to breathe with a cold vice of fear on her heart. It swelled until she could feel the pop of pressure released like a dam breaking.

Ser Fairfeld stuffed her in the larder via the expedient method of tripping her down the little ladder. It did nothing for her dignity, and the world rang out with pain as she caught herself on her forearms and knees. Her head felt like it was a giant bell, ringing and echoing in the quiet dark as the trapdoor was slammed shut behind her. Dimly she could hear the sounds of voices from above her. She couldn’t understand how no one else could feel the terror, the spot of wrong that threatened everything wonderful about the dream she found herself in. Her dream was rapidly becoming a nightmare, trapped in the dark with nothing but terror and the sound of her own beating heart to keep her company.

There were footsteps above her head, shaking dust and dirt down into the larder air. She could feel it, that discordant song that whispered a promise of an end. A calm spot in the wave of terror that swamped every iota of her being. She wanted to be closer to it, needed it like a drug in her veins and oxygen in her lungs. It hurt to be away from the calm before the storm that reached icy fingers from the north to freeze her in place. Her fingers pressed against her face like claws, bandages digging into the flesh of her cheeks in her panic. Down on her knees in the packed dirt, Jane knew true fear.

Something safe and sane approached from the south at the same time something dreadful appeared in the north.

She screamed in terror, her usual soft peeps giving way to an awful shriek that would have made a hunting bird proud. Her head was thrown back, whites of her eyes shining even in the sparse light glinting through the cracks in the floor above, throat working overtime to compensate for the shrill wail of terror that Jane let out. Here wasn’t safe, and she needed to run run run until she couldn’t feel the thing pressing against her throat with a knife-sharp edge. And the sound echoed upon echoes until nothing but a single string of shrill shrieks was all that could be heard. She could feel the tears running down her face in warm and wet trails, the feathers and flopping bits all standing straight up in her terror.

The trapdoor slammed open and a single figure slid down the ladder without a care for their own safety. Too short to be any of the people she had spent so many dazed days with, the figure clanked when they moved. Warm hands pressed against her face, and a deep baritone began shushing her.

There was green light leaking through the figure’s glove, and all she could hear was the discordant sound of something breaking the storm. If one song was a ripped hole in the fabric of worlds, this sound was a zipper pulling the holes tight. She wept, the throat searing screams petering out until all she could hear was the baritone voice.

“There’s a good love. There’s nothing gonna hurt you here. See, you’re safe and sound.” Leather-clad hands, larger than her own and warm as sunshine, gently pulled her hand-claws away from her face to cradle in the owner’s palms. “Let’s see your pretty face, shall we, lass?” The warm baritone waited until her eyes focused on their face, and Jane could have wept for what she saw.

A square face with ruddy cheeks, now-white hair pulled into a ponytail. He kept his beard and mustache bushy yet well maintained, his eyebrows just as bushy and his arching horns polished near to gleaming. He had wrinkles aplenty on leathery skin, the lines around his mouth and eyes crinkling in a smile. “Well look at you, lass. Aren’t you just a beauty?” Her eyes wanted to look anywhere but at his, darting about furiously in panic as she breathed like an overworked horse.

The man was far taller than her if she had been standing, barrel-chested, and stout in a way that Master Dennet never could be. But there was a massive shield on his back and a sword strapped to his hip, and Jane had somehow never felt safer. He wore chainmail and leather, plates of armor on his chest and legs that she had no names for, and looked like he could eat nails for breakfast and still have room to eat a soul or two to send express to Satan. His gloved fingers rubbed circles into the backs of her hands, and he made quiet little shushing sounds. “That’s a good lass. Just breathe with me.”

A voice, cultured and well-paced with an accent she couldn’t place, called out from above. “Is everything all right, Herald?”

The man winked conspiratorially at her before he called up. “We’re all fine here!” She made a tiny peep and he smiled at her. “Aren’t we just fine lass?”

The creeping thing was still there, chewing on the edge of her subconscious and leaving holes in her sanity. But the panic was less when he held her hands, and as he went to let go she scrabbled at him, bandaged fingers leaving little wet trails on his gloves. Jane peeped frantically, trying so hard to force her tongue to make the words come out. Stay, stay, and be the rock upon which her sanity was built.

He shushed her with an ever-increasing amount of patience. “All right now. We’re not staying down here in this larder, lass. But we can stay just a bit longer.”

Longer wouldn’t make the thing go away, even Jane knew that. Staying in the larder wasn’t even safe, and she couldn’t just batten down the hatch and wait for the storm to blow over. The ripping sensation spiked again, and she reflexively squeezed on the hand that glowed green through his glove, eyes wide in her panic.

He winced. “Now lass, let’s not be having that.” Gentle fingers unclenched hers from their death grip, and he went back to rubbing circles into her hands. “We were doing just fine, weren’t we?” The man patted at her hands until she let go, then went to grab at the ladder. “Come on. Let’s go pay a visit to Master Dennet and see what’s the matter.”

Jane did not want to go up the ladder. Jane did not want the old man to go up the ladder either, but objectively Jane knew she couldn’t stay curled up in a ball on the packed dirt floor. That didn’t mean she had to particularly like where her dream was making her go. The old man gestured to her in a come-hither motion, and he gave that sort of face her grandfather made when she was about to be a disappointment to the family name.

So, of course, she went up the ladder, the old man following right behind her. “There you go, lass. I’ll be right behind you if you slip. Up you get.” And so she climbed, right to the top where a whole host of new faces made her want to go right back down into the hole. The demon's hand on her backside prevented any such attempts before they even began.

There was a woman with black hair and a strange kind of eye symbol on her clothes, again with a sword strapped to her hip and a shield on her back, who looked ready to cut Jane down as she climbed out. Another short man, barrel-chested with all of his curly chest hair bare for the world to see, gave her at least the semblance of a friendly smile. And then there was a tall man, bald with pointed ears and a cleft chin, who looked all too interested in Jane as she emerged from the larder.

Jane did not like how the bald man looked at her like a novelty or a particularly fascinating specimen under a microscope. She peeped and tried to hide behind the man as he climbed up and out, hindered only by the fact that she couldn't stop herself from shaking like a leaf in fall. She felt better for the attempt, orbiting the man like the two moons did this strange dream world. He let her hide behind him with a rueful smile, holding up his faintly glowing hand so that she could clutch at it like a child with a security blanket.

“Well now, lass. Let’s have a look at you, hm?” The demon man nodded to Dennet and Elaina before turning to his companions. “Now what’s this about you being an abomination?” He paused meaningfully as Jane made a terrified chirp. “Solas, care to have a look at the poor thing?”

The bald-headed man who seemed to be allergic to shoes and had a strange homeless vagrant aesthetic that Caroline would have hated, complete with some strange animal jawbone as a pendant, stepped forward as carefully as he could. “Would you allow me to take a look, little one?” He was gentle as he reached for her hand. “I will not bring you harm.”

Jane chirped even as the woman made a rude noise under her breath. “Maker be blessed, let us be done with this farce. She is an abomination.”

The bald man with the pointed ears held up a hand for silence. He took a long moment to study Jane before he spoke again. “I do not feel the touch of a demon about her. Simply a terror all her own, but that is to be expected. Simply fascinating. Herald?”

Jane was not a particular fan of the way that man’s eyes lit up upon saying she hadn’t the ‘touch of a demon about her’. If anything, she felt the flapping bits on her back fluff up and arch protectively over as much of her body as the forearm length appendages could manage. The feathers on her arms and legs, even her chest, fluffed as she did her level best to keep the tall demon man with the sword and shield between her and the bald man. She felt her hand squeezed reassuringly, and Jane peeped as she looked up and up at the dusky-skinned man.

“You’ll be alright, lass. We’ll have your mystery solved in a moment. Seeker, would you care to oblige us?”

The other short man with his chest hair on display gave a shocked start, uncrossing his arms from his chest. “Now hold on, is that really necessary? The kid’s already terrified out of her mind. What if she starts screaming again?”

Elaina clutched at her heart. “Don’t be too harsh on her. She’s a good girl, just a little lost.”

The sword-wielding woman made another rude noise before reaching her hand out to Jane.

And everything went silent, no screaming void to the north and no gentle hum from the palm she clutched so desperately. Jane breathed, her tongue flattening enough for her to taste the air she breathed. She felt her grip loosen, and Jane turned her head to the north to hear… nothing. No static crackle and pop, no long nails scraping against a chalkboard. There was no ghost of terror wailing and reverberating in her ears, no glass shattering in an empty vacuum. Her skin didn’t prickle, her feathers flattened as her wings dropped.

Silence, blissful silence.

The old man gently took her hand in his. “Lass?”

There were tears in her eyes as she looked down at her toes so none of them could see, every fiber of her being praying that the sound didn’t come back. The old man squeezed her shoulder in a shadow of comfort. “Well, Seeker? What have you to say about our little friend?” Jane blinked owlishly at the man and he patted her head with a faint smile that was clearly meant to be reassuring.

“It is… complicated,” the woman finally stated, the words given begrudgingly. “Clearly there is something about her, but all I can say is that the purge worked on her. I do not think she is ill-intentioned, merely some kind of unfortunate hedge mage.”

The demon tugged on Jane’s hand as she stared off into the distance, long feathered ears perking up unconsciously to try in vain to catch the sounds of whatever disaster had spawned to the north. It took him several attempts to pull her attention towards him, and he patiently waited for her to focus her eyes on his face. “Well then. A lost little mage of a kind no one has ever seen before. Solas, have you seen anything like her in your dreams?”

The bald man, apparently named Solas, crossed his hands behind his back as he regarded Jane with a critical eye. It was a long silence as he examined her, walking around the other man to try to take a closer look. Jane, for her part, made a strange hissing sound in her panic and tried to avoid the depth of his gaze. Finally, he spoke, and there was a gleeful inflection to his previously calm and cultured tone. “No, Herald. I have never seen her like in any of my dreams in the Fade. It’s remarkable. She looks like no spirit I have ever encountered.”

Jane was allowed to hide behind the demon again as he turned to his companions and the elderly couple who had taken care of her for so long. “Well. Something has her in a panic. Shall we go see what it is?”

Shaking his head and shrugging, the man with his chest exposed and red-orange hair pulled back into a ponytail regarded Jane with a friendly smile. “Sure, let’s take the kid on a field trip. What could possibly go wrong? Poor girl doesn’t even know left from sideways after all that.”

Jane peeped at him, mildly offended. The man laughed. “Easy there, no offense meant. Just pointing out the obvious.”

The demon patted at her hand and she felt mildly comforted by his gesture, even though his hand was heavy and his gloves hurt her tender skin. “Don’t mind Varric, he’s just dramatic. Comes with the territory. Or at least that's what I've been told. You've met Solas. He's our resident expert on the Fade." He used his spare hand to gesture next at the woman with the black hair and the permanent scowl. “That’s Cassandra. She’s more bark than bite, I promise.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes and made a rude noise. “This is not the time for levity, Herald. Clearly she is an abomination. Just look at her.”

The bald man, Solas, shook his head at her. “Much the same is said of the Qunari behind their backs. And yet the little one has shown less of an urge to harm us than they ever could. It is truly remarkable what one can discover in this world.”

Jane resolved to do her best to keep the demon or Varric between her and the elf. Or at least she did until Elaina opened her arms and Jane nearly leaped around the horned man over to hide in her embrace. Elaina and Dennet had taken care of her for the last few weeks, helping her heal and deal with the protuberances that had burst from her back like a bad infection. Her throat ached after all the screaming, and she surreptitiously coughed like it was a secret, chirping pitifully up at Elaina as the older woman gently rearranged her clothing to sit properly.

“Now listen, girl. The Herald has offered to take you as far as Redcliffe to see if he can find your family. Mind your manners and listen when he tells you to do something. My man won’t be here to pull you out of trouble, and neither will Bron or Ser Fairfeld. You’ll have to look after yourself out there. Listen to the Herald and keep yourself out of trouble, girl.” Elaina fussed with the cut collar of the tunic Jane wore like a shift, needlessly fidgeting with it out of worry.

Jane, for her part, chirped and tried to look like butter couldn’t melt in her mouth, tongue swelled tight in her mouth and throat bubbling with yet another blister that had been covered in ointment and bandages. She looked a frightful mess and knew it, tears welling in her eyes as she embraced the older woman. Somehow she had a feeling this dream would take her beyond the bounds of Redcliffe, and she didn't like what that implied.

Dennet crossed his arms forebodingly, and Jane tried to gulp past her tongue out of nerves. He nodded at them all. “Well, Inquisition. You’ll look after the girl for us, won’t you? Find her family? There are things to be done yet on the farm, but she’ll keep the horses for you until you can get to someone with sense.”

The kind demon nodded and held his hand out for her to hold. “Come on, lass. Let’s see about getting you home safe and sound, shall we? Qamarinasil Adaar, at your service. You can call me Qamar.” Jane couldn’t help but give a tiny smile as she took his hand, his ridiculous mustache wiggling with the force of his twinkling grin. She chirped at him, and he laughed.

And somehow Jane knew her dream was in safe hands with Qamarinasil Adaar and his friends.


	4. Of Sound and Fury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, this chapter... is probably about to make or break the wonderful reading relationship we have.
> 
> If it does, there’s no hard feelings.
> 
> Everyone on the edge.... trust me, I am going somewhere with this.
> 
> “ Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
> 
> That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
> 
> And then is heard no more. It is a tale
> 
> Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
> 
> Signifying nothing.”
> 
> — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5), William Shakespeare

Qamar rode horses like most people would a bull: badly, with very little finesse, and the unspoken agreement that any who saw it should never speak of it again. He sat as if he was on top of a barrel, and made Jane look like one of the most skilled riders out of the group. The Inquisition had brought their own mounts but left them at the camps the Herald apparently set up as he went along. Jane rode astride Apple as she normally did, and Qamar awkwardly rode his new and improved mount back towards the farm’s entrance. His companions made up a ragtag honor guard, and Jane was instructed to direct Qamar as close as she could to the very thing that filled her with terror.

It wasn’t enough for her to finally hear the sounds again, her faint whimpers forming a strange counterpoint to the clip-clop of horse hooves against the packed earth of the path. A part of Jane wanted to turn to her side and beg the woman to do whatever she had done to stop the sound again, but she had a feeling her chirps wouldn’t translate well. Nor, really, did she think the woman would oblige her. The silence had been a test of some kind that Jane had failed, much to the quiet delight of the bald-headed elf.

Solas, she had to remember that his name was Solas. The woman’s name was Cassandra, and the redheaded man was Varric.

Jane liked Varric. He had helped her up into her saddle without a second thought and didn’t make her feel awkward for her weak wobble after whatever Cassandra had done to her. If anything, he had looked at her with a large amount of sympathy as she shuddered in the breeze. There was something about the kindness in his eyes as her wings fluttered about her, flapping desperately to help her keep her balance before folding against her spine and shoulders. “You alright there?”

She chirped reassuringly at him, then fluttered her still growing wings nervously as the group neared the northern path. The elf- Solas, she had to remember his name, seemed fascinated at her evident distress. “Herald, it seems we are on the correct course.”

Jane remembered this path, the bone aching pain that had greeted her upon the beginning of this terrible dream. She remembered the sound of little bodies hitting a tree and the wind screaming around her in a whirl of branches and eerie green light. There was something about this place that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, her feathers fluff, and her wings to rustle about her restlessly. She wondered if the air was supposed to taste like copper, or if the sticky wetness that trailed down her face was supposed to happen.

She was too close, far too close to the sound that reverberated in her head, so close that not even the door closing sounds of the glowing green in Qamar's hand could drown out the sounds. Jane keened a high pitched warbling wail that set the birds to twittering in the trees in panic. She wiped the wetness away with the feathers on her arm, somewhat surprised when the downy gray came back scarlet red as she smeared the wetness across her face.

It was Solas who gripped her knee and forced her to look down. “Little one? Are you alright?” She couldn’t hear him over the sound and fury that filled her head, and Jane made a desperate attempt to tear her gaze away from the source of her terror. Her eyes were wide as she stared down at Solas, the frantic terror dilating her pupils and causing her to frantically look anywhere but at Solas as she tried in vain to identify the source of her terror. His hand squeezed her knee tighter, and she felt something cold and minty wash over her. The warm and sticky wetness on her face was still there, but something had happened that caused her not to lick the stuff from her upper lip every time she wailed.

She breathed copper in and out came a discordant wail of terror. Jane didn’t know what laid ahead on the northern path, but she knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Qamar turned in his saddle and Cassandra tightened her grip on her sword. “Solas? What’s wrong with the girl?” The little party had stopped before the crest of the hill, each of them eyeing the shrieking young woman with various levels of trepidation and concern. Varric, in particular, had reached a hand up to gently hold her other knee.

The Herald looked back at her and saw the whites of her eyes, nostrils flaring like an overworked horse as she breathed raggedly, blood smeared across her face from a rather impressive nosebleed that stained the front of her borrowed tunic. She looked as if she was ready to flee down the hill at the first sign of trouble, turn her cart-horse around and run as if her life depended on it. From the way she stared north and the pulsing of his Mark rang out in time with her impression of a hunting bird, the young woman had already determined that this was enough adventure for one day.

Qamar took a long moment to think before he looked at Cassandra and sighed. “Seeker, see if you can do something about the screaming before she wakes up the whole Hinterlands.”

Cassandra merely nodded, and Solas took a step back to get out of the way of the inevitable spell purge to cut Jane’s attachment to the Fade off. Once it was done, her screams petered out into soft hiccups and distressed chirps as she looked around, her skin gone ashen and pale from her terror. Her hair blew about in the breeze, long mouse brown strands fallen from the no-nonsense braid Elaina had styled her hair into, sections of it stuck to her forehead by fear-induced sweat. The blood oozing out of her nose had finally stopped, the edges of it beginning to dry in the cool autumn breeze.

Varric squeezed her knee. “You wanna get off the horse, kid? Maybe walk around, see how that goes?” Qamar nodded to her from his position in the lead of their little party, and Jane slid out of the saddle in a puddle of limbs and feathers. Varric caught her with a surprised grunt. “You’re a lot lighter than you look.” For her part, she latched her arms around his neck and tried not to think about the fact that she was in a princess carry from a man a head shorter but twice as wide as she was.

She could feel the force of his frown on the edges of her feather tips, and she chirped nervously. Jane coughed up a substantial wad of odd phlegm, tinged with blood, and streaked through with greenish-yellow pus. There was no delicacy in her cough, not as it rattled her bones and forced her to contort in Varric’s arms in order to cough out the gooey substance all over the front of her tunic. He grimaced and tried to avoid getting any of it on him. “On second thought, maybe we should have left you back at the farmhouse.”

Jane wanted to agree, to say yes with every fiber of her being. Instead, all that her thick tongue and fluid-filled throat could manage was a single, sad, and drawn out, peep.

The Herald had no such qualms. A man of stern countenance, he dismounted from his horse with a long sigh. Qamar resettled his sword and shield and stalked his way down the little party line. “Is there some kind of problem?”

Jane was weak to the stern look of disappointment he leveled at her, and she waved her hands frantically as if she could wipe the expression from his face. She wiggled, coughing slightly and with a trail of saliva and bloody phlegm hanging precariously from her bottom lip, until Varric bent at the knee enough to gracefully put her feet on the ground. He still supported her, one hand between her wings on the sensitive and exposed skin. His face was a study of emotions: concern, disgust, wariness. And Jane coughed again, the sweet silence broken only by the low wheeze as she tried to breathe properly.

Solas started forward with his hands crossed behind his back. “Herald, perhaps it would be best if we left the little one with the horses while we investigate the cause of her distress.” He tilted his head to consider the shaking young woman before him, growing paler by the minute as he contemplated her.

Varric rubbed careful circles into Jane’s back as she coughed, worrying over her overall wellbeing as she coughed a bloody chunk onto the ground. He studiously ignored the mess she had become and was making on the dirt in front of him as if it wasn’t happening. Jane liked Varric more than the calculating gaze Solas gave her or the pitying looks from Cassandra.

Cassandra was a wonderful woman who kept quieting the discordant cacophony that came from the north, the sound of shattering glass and crackling lightning echoing down the path. It would never make sense to her why the sound grew so loud so quickly, enough to make her head dizzy and her nose bleed. She was still coughing up blood and phlegm, the pus traces lessening as her throat burned less. Maybe the blister on her throat would finally drain, or maybe the swelling of her tongue would go down, and she could finally hack up that thing that had settled uncomfortably in her ribcage.

All Jane knew was that Cassandra was a saint, Varric was a very nice man, Qamar might as well have been a drill sergeant, and Solas… Solas creeped her out. He had an unholy gleam in his eye that had started when her nose began to bleed and he looked up the path with an unspoken question hanging above the group. Solas had an idea, and Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to be involved in the solution to the problem Solas was engineering in his head.

Qamar all but marched his way back to the little group with a slight scowl on his face. “What’s going on? Are you alright?” And then he saw the little puddle of blood and miscellaneous bodily fluids on the ground and front of her tunic, and Qamar sighed. “Lass, you shouldn’t be out and about if you’re this ill.”

Jane shook her head frantically, wiping away the wetness on her face with her other arm’s feathers, leaving both covered in disgusting messes that made Cassandra politely wrinkle her nose. Varric kept rubbing the soothing circles on her back. “You’ll be alright, kid. Just focus on breathing nice and slow.” Jane made a sound halfway between a chirp and a sigh and she did her best to stop herself from crying from shame as everyone stared at her. Unused to such attention, she was unable to stop the tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. The tears mingled with the mess already on her face, and Jane was certain she looked like a disaster on the side of the road.

And then the screaming started, nails dragged across a chalkboard, and made every hair and feather on her body stand up in terror. She hiccuped and scrubbed her eyes with the bandages on the backs of her hands, ignoring the sting of salt against still raw blistered flesh. Varric gently pushed her towards Apple, around the little puddle of vomit that dried into the dirt, before he slung a very complicated crossbow down off his shoulder. “Stay right here. We’ll be right back and you'll never notice we were gone.”

Jane did not want the people to leave her, not even when Varric reached a hand up to ruffle her hair. Especially not when he gave her a roguish grin and a jaunty salute before joining the rest of the group. She coughed and leaned on Apple’s flank, tired beyond measure from her earlier screaming. Her throat felt hoarse and dry, and she almost sobbed in relief when Solas pressed a cool hand to the back of her neck.

“Rest here, little one. We will return.” Somehow when Solas said it, Jane wasn’t as comforted as when Varric did. If anything, Jane wanted to cling to the short man with the impressive crossbow instead of the bald man with the stick. Or maybe if she managed to pull herself back onto Apple’s back and stop coughing, she could go with the rest of the group.

Not that she wanted to head towards the sound of the screaming terror, but she didn’t want to be left alone either. Jane shook her head and gasped at the lightheaded rush, sparks flying in her vision. There was no hope of her collecting herself for a mad dash to the top of the hill, no magic spell that would suddenly make her knees stop knocking into each other in her exhaustion.

They left her there, bones aching and lungs overworked, to investigate the source of the sound that she could still remember searing away at her soul. She wanted to stop them, something about it all made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Instead, she leaned on Apple’s side, dry-heaving and tasting copper on the back of her tongue as she breathed in the air she had thought was long gone from her reach. They left her alone with nothing but the whisper of wind through the trees and two horses who would rather be anywhere but at the bottom of the hill.

It was a moment of peace shattered by a shout and a rough tumble, the glimmer of sickly green, and a popping rush that pressed on her eardrums and made her whimper at the sharp pain. The sound was something ethereal and wrong, and all she could do was scream right back at the thing.

_Run._

_Don't stop._

_Run._

_Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth._

_Don't let them catch you._

_Run._

_Come on Jane, you can do it._

_Just a little farther!_

_Go, Jane!_

Long limbs like crayon scribbles on thick paper, twisted lines around a skeleton made of nightmares, pulled at reality in a discordant puddle against the ground. Green and glowing, pulsing in a sick man's heartbeat, it pulled itself free from whatever layer of Hell it belonged in to grab at Jane's feet with spindle fingers.

It was then that Jane realized how very wrong she was to call Qamar a demon.

But this... this thing that loomed over her and reached cold fingers towards her face in an attempt to claw it right off her skull. This was a real demon. Not Qamar with his gentle smile and warm hands, but this thing that crawled over her with its arms outstretched, black claws scrabbling closer and closer to the soft and delicate parts of her anatomy. Something snapped deep inside her like a string plucked on an out of tune violin. The feathers on her neck fluffed out and out, and she felt the cold creep of terror prickling at her nerves and turning her breath to fog.

She shivered with a glacial cold she hadn't felt before it laid its hands on her. And it welled up and out until all she could do was hold on to what was left of consciousness as the cold burst out of her throat in a shrill eruption of sound and force.

The monster stopped, its claws right before the whites of her eyes, with its face stuck in a rictus parody of a smile. She breathed out dry ice and the memory of winter, flecks of blood splashed across the front of monster's body and her face alike. That thing in the back of her throat had popped under the pressure and the cold chill of oxygen finally filled lungs that had forgotten long ago what it was like to be full. The monster cracked, snow drifting from its arms as it struggled to reach her.

_Jane!_

_You have to run!_

_You’re going to make it._

_Promise me, ok?_

_You have to get away._

_Run!_

She screamed, the cold in her lungs freezing the back of her tongue as the grass under her fingers crunched from the sudden hoarfrost. Scream and scream until all she knew was the feeling of solid earth beneath her, the cold inside her, and the monster above her. The cold wanted to be let out, stung in her veins until she was too small to hold it at bay. Her fingers dug into the dirt, steadily hardening nails clawing as she pushed herself back and away in a graceless scramble of limbs that faltered in the face of the clinging cold.

But still, she screamed.

And so, still, the cold crept its way out of her lungs and froze the impossible.

The cold cut out with a sudden finality at the same time some massive thing barreled into the monster at full force. It shattered under the weight of a warm body that ran through it with all the fury of a wrecking ball, and Jane was left gasping as the cold leeched out of her under the hot noon sun.

"Well... shit. That? That is why we don't leave baby mages alone, Herald." The little clearing was silent in the face of Varric's declaration, right up until Cassandra made a disgusted noise.

Jane trembled, gasping for air she hadn't known her body needed so badly. She struggled to get off the ground, her newly grown wings flapping uselessly in the frozen dust as she tried to roll over and push herself up with arms that shook from the effort. The world had been a bright and technicolor wonder that snapped into a boring and flat palette that might as well have been in black and white. But, regardless, everything swam in front of her exhausted eyes until all she could do was stare almost vacantly into space.

Oh good. Apple had stayed with her. Probably because Qamar had bothered to put his massive horse with her, giving her at least some sense of safety in a herd.

A gloved hand pressed against her chin, and gentle gloved fingers guided her gaze up to the frowning visage of one displeased Cassandra. "We should have left her behind." For now, Jane focused on the way Cassandra's gloved fingers moved back and forth as the other woman frowned. "I cannot promise that another purge will not damage the girl. We should take her back where she was safe. It is too dangerous for her."

A grunt from behind her was the only sign that Qamar acknowledged what either had said. The creak of leather was the only warning Jane got before she was scooped off the ground and cradled to the horned man's chest. She was so tired she couldn't even manage a squeak of protest. Eventually, she would get tired of being carried everywhere by other people, or being treated like her misfortune made her deaf. "Well. I thought it was exciting."

"Sure. Let's count having a Terror demon turned into an icicle by a terrified mage as exciting." Varric stepped close enough to grab her attention, and he gave her a warm smile that was kind enough that she managed a tiny smile back. "There she is. You ok, kid?"

Jane had enough strength left to nod. "Yes." It sounded wrong when she talked, her lungs stretching in ways that weren't normal. One hand pressed to her chest as she frowned. "I'm... fine? Yes." There, she wasn't breathing right and her heart was beating far too fast. But she felt fine. Tired, but fine. So why was she making sounds from so low in her chest and why did it feel like she was breathing and talking at the same time? Even worse, why did she sound like she was trilling like some demented songbird? "Fine."

She could almost feel the collective jaw drop. "Oh? Hello then, little lass." The chest she was pressed against rumbled when he spoke, and Jane flicked her eyes up to see Qamar grinning at her. "So you can talk after all."

Jane wasn't sure how to feel about the thoughtful look on Solas's face. "At the very least, we have established that she is a rational and thinking being. One that is very clearly a mage with no training. Which does not make her an abomination."

Cassandra sighed. "No one was arguing that she was anything but a mage. Obviously, a mage in desperate need of protection and training. It does not answer the question of why she looks like _that_."

Solas simply folded his hands behind his back with a slow blink. "I believe the answer to that is quite obvious, Seeker. A young mage, just coming into her gift, this close to a Rift? She must have tapped into that gift without realizing it."

"No... No I didn't." Jane was too tired to do anything in protest as Qamar bundled her up atop Apple's wide back. "I'm not magic."

Varric barked out a laugh that didn't stop, even as the group wandered resettled around the horse. He looked up from examining a bolt he had pulled out of a tree, satisfied that it had maintained enough integrity to be shot once more. "Oh man, I haven't heard a lie that bad since Daisy tried to hide a baby rabbit from Hawke, in Hawke's own manor." Varric reached a hand up to pat at her knee. "Don't worry. The Seeker's not about to drag you off to a Circle."

"Oh. Ok. What's a Circle?" She slumped over Apple's neck as the dwarf steadied her with one sturdy arm. "Is it bad?"

Solas's eyebrows could not have crawled further up his forehead. "A mage that does not know of the Circles? What a blissfully sheltered life you must have lived, little one." There, that was his thinking face, and Jane was coming to know that it would probably bode ill for her later down the line. "But they are all broken now, and thus we have come to quite the impasse."

Cassandra choked on a breath. "You cannot possibly mean-"

Solas cut her off with the raise of his hand. "You cannot deny that she has quite a gift. Left unchecked, you can see what it has already done to her. Alternatively, would you have us find a Templar to keep her under guard for the rest of her life?" One eyebrow quirked, proving that Solas's eyebrows had some life in them yet.

"If Chuckles is volunteering to teach the kid to not turn people into icicles when she's scared, I'm all for it." Varric shrugged from alongside Apple, doing his best to keep Jane from flopping off the back of her horse.

Qamar was silent for a long moment, contemplating the options. "Solas. Would you be able to take on an apprentice at the same time as everything else you do for the Inquisition? Or would it leave you stretched too thin?"

The elf inclined his head. "If she is willing, it would be quite an enjoyable undertaking. A mage, realizing her gift near the Rift? Would it be due to the Rift or from herself? Fascinating. Would it be caused by the weakness in the Veil? Or, conversely, could she have innate access to magics beyond our current understanding? The possibilities do bear further research, Herald."

"All... All right then. I'll take that to mean you're on board with the plan. There you go then, lass. You're going to learn how to turn demons into icicles and have a _great_ time doing it." Qamar flashed her what he clearly thought was a winning smile, and all Jane could do was chirp.


	5. An Unnecessary Freezing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN GUYS!!!!
> 
> Have an extra chapter because I'm the queen of gross and love this holiday more than life itself.
> 
> Enjoy some metaphysics and the wonder of magical theory.
> 
> “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”  
> ― Carl Reiner

It took Solas approximately three minutes to lead Jane off once they returned to the Inquisition's camp. She had enough time to slide down from Apple's back, hand the reins over to some willowy scout in leather, and turn her exhausted body towards the nice tent Varric pointed towards with a small smile. He didn't say a word as he did it, silent and unyielding as he opened the heavy canvas and inclined his head gracefully.

Jane would never be that kind of graceful, not as she had to rely on Varric's ever so helpful shoulder to avoid falling over as she lurched towards the tent. The rest of the little party seemed to split up to focus on much more pressing matters than whatever Solas seemed to want to focus on. But more importantly, Jane was too tired to care about whatever concern shone brightest in Varric’s eyes.

Solas didn’t touch her. He didn’t reach his hands out to steady her when she wobbled, merely waited for her to snap her little wings out at odd angles to catch herself before tragedy struck. Jane appreciated his silence when others would have laughed.

The little tent had been set up for someone’s creature comforts, but clearly, they didn’t take into account one graceless woman’s fumbling attempts at remaining upright. Thankfully, whoever had set up the tent had at least anticipated someone would need to rest, and Solas at last turned to face her in front of a rather sturdy looking cot. “Come now, little one. Let us see what ill fortune has befallen you.”

Jane looked lost for a moment too long, and Solas beckoned her over with an impatient crook of his fingers. She all but fell onto the cot, bandaged feet only giving her so much purchase on the packed dirt. Solas guided her gently to sit on the cot’s edge, her bandaged fingers curled uselessly in his palm. It didn’t hurt as much as before, the thickness of her nails finally hardening in their new slight curves. Her skin no longer felt like someone had rubbed away at it with steel wool and sandpaper, and for that she was glad.

Fluffy grey feathers emerging from beneath what had become her usual attire were not a source of any kind of joy. Whatever thing she had done to save herself seemed to have solidified whatever terrible thing she had apparently done to herself.

Solas had no concept of privacy and unwound the bandages from her arm with brisk and efficient sweeps of his arm. More and more of her was brought into the light, and Solas grew ever more delighted with the more bandages he removed.

His fingers were warm and surprisingly gentle as he pressed them against her pulse, and that was about where the similarities to a doctor’s appointment ended. The air tasted like petrichor and tea, the heavy press of old books and something long forgotten. And all of her knew that was Solas, tapping against something in her that had never been there before. She was Jane, just regular old Jane, and it terrified her when he hummed under his breath.

“Well, look at you. A fine mess of spell work you’ve become.” She could feel her ears flattening against her head with his every word, and wasn’t that a dilemma she couldn’t spare the energy to understand, but she still hung onto his every word. “A transformation? Cut off and entangled... a complex work to be sure, and quite the costly mistake.” His pale fingers wrapped around her arm, turning it to and fro in the light. Solas uncurled her fingers to look at her nails turned talons, and his eyes grew imperceptibly larger.

“In all my trips into the Fade, I have never seen anything like what you have become. Neither man nor beast, but both at once. There’s no telling what you were any longer, little one.” His fingers were almost gentle as he lifted her chin up, looked her in the eyes, and tilted her face to get a better view. “Truly fascinating. Tell me little one. Do you remember what happened?”

Jane could only indulge his curiosity, for she herself did not understand. “I was... I was with Caroline.” Her head ached and made her memory that much harder to recall. “It wasn’t... it wasn’t Caroline’s fault.”

Solas hummed under his breath as he examined her. “Is that so?”

“She... she didn’t mean to. I mean... it’s Caroline. They had a beautiful wedding and I’m very happy for them.”

One brow raised as Solas pressed his hand against her chest to feel her heartbeat. “Is that so? Sounds like you did mind after all. Breathe for me.”

Jane breathed in and out like every other physical she had ever had, opened her mouth wide so Solas could see the back of her throat. “What? No! I’m glad they got married. They’re... perfect.”

The elf barked out a laugh. “But you did mind. Or you would not have tried to fly away.”

“No! There was an accident, but it wasn’t Caroline’s fault!” There was no way the green explosion in the sky could have been any part of Caroline’s picture-perfect weather. Besides, no one in their right mind would set off fireworks in such a dry and hot part of summer. “I just... I tried to get to Caroline.”

His fingers on her throat felt strange as they slid into her feathers to feel where her larynx should have been as she spoke. “Some would say there was something poetic about what you tried to become. I’m sorry to say that this magic of yours is something I do not have the expertise to undo. You’ve woven the fabric of your being around becoming a new creature, and there’s no coming back from this.” Solas was gentle as he examined her ears, pulled up her hair to examine the points, and watched them wiggle. “Would that we had found you sooner, before your body learned this shape and began to grow into it.”

Jane shivered as she felt that pressure against that glacial part of her that had stirred to life when the monster tried to kill her. “What does that mean?”

Solas gave her a rueful smile. “It means that you are no longer what you were born as, and have become a new creature instead. But, you remain yourself in all the ways that matter. Your connection to the Fade hasn’t suffered from being so close to a Rift, and you are... entirely teachable.”

Jane wasn’t sure she liked his answer.

They had let her rest at the camp while the Herald returned to the farmstead to make his report to Dennet. Solas had been kind enough to allow her the polite fiction of pretending that he hadn’t seen her cry herself to sleep at his revelation.

Jane wasn’t human. A part of her had known that since the moment she woke up in this strange place, but she had done her best to shove it into the back of her mind and pay it no further attention. Now, faced with the stark declaration of what an experienced mage such as Solas couldn’t help her with, Jane had rather quickly been made to face the facts of reality. Oh, how Caroline would have laughed if she could see her now. She had turned the utilitarian grey wool blanket on the cot into a sort of shawl, threw it over herself and held it closed tight under her chin so that only her face could be seen.

Varric was the one to break the terseness at the little campfire, each person studiously pretending that Jane wasn’t there with her eyes all red and puffy from crying. “So. A baby mage in the middle of the Hinterlands. There’s got to be a story there. Ran away from home maybe? Think you could make a difference, or just want to feel the sun on your... feathers?”

Jane sniffled, her talons stuck in the thick wool as she flexed her fingers nervously. She was silent for a long while, and Varric opened his mouth to speak to her again when she quietly spoke. “Magic isn’t real.”

The campfire grew quiet, that awkward sort of silence where no one wanted to even breathe for fear of shattering something irreplaceable. “Look, sweetheart. No one here is going to hurt you.” He turned to look fully at her with kindness in his eyes and gentleness in his voice. “We don’t mind if you’ve got a little magic.”

Qamar cleared his throat from across the campfire. “Anybody tells you to sing different, you let me know lass. But, my wife would have my horns at this rate. What’s your name, little lass? Varric will come up with all sorts of awful nicknames if you don’t give him something to call you.”

Said dwarf barked out a laugh. “I’ll do it too. Let’s see... Peep? No, that’s not your style. C’mon, give me something to work with here.”

“Jane.” She cleared her throat, still not used to the feeling vibrating somewhere deep in her chest instead of under her chin where it belonged. “My name is Jane.”

“Nope. Trust me on this one. Nobody will believe that. Sweetheart, you’re going to have to try a bit harder for that to stick.” Varric patted what he thought was her knee under the blanket, nodding sagely like he knew all the secrets to the universe. “I’d never let a story like you have a name like that.”

She blinked at him, slow and careful. “But that is my name. Jane. Jane Marie Smith.” Jane wasn’t sure why this cheerful man wanted to assume she was something extraordinary when that was all Caroline’s specialty.

Qamar whistled sharply through his teeth and the purse of his lips. “Well, that’s a mouthful. Jeanmarie Smythe. Ring a bell, Varric?”

Varric snorted and waved his hand in Jane's direction. “Free Marcher for sure. You’ll need to practice if you want to make people think you’re from anywhere else. Well, you’ll never get one past the rest of us Free Marchers, but you’ll do here.” He tapped at her knee with a thick finger before he tugged at the blanket.

It wasn’t long or strong enough to resist him, and her impromptu safety barrier was dragged off her head so Varric could squint at her. “Well. You’re definitely too pretty for me to call you just plain ol' Jane."

She blinked back at him, unconsciously angling her upper body back and away so he wasn't so close to her. "But I _am_ just plain Jane. Always have been." It wasn't like she was lying to them. All in all, Jane thought she was getting her point across rather splendidly, even with the strange layered chirp and scratch her voice had become since she screamed a tiny winter storm.

Qamar quirked an eyebrow at her. "Lass, you're halfway between an elf and a bird. I don't think anyone's going to call you Plain Jane ever again."

Jane couldn't stop the blush blossoming across her cheeks if she tried. Her fingers untangled from the blanket, she slapped her palms against her cheeks to hide it as Varric threw his head back and laughed.

Qamar grinned at her from across the light. "I think we'll be fending off all kinds of suitors for you now. You know, since you're one of us now."

She peeked out from between her fingers, dumbfounded by possibly the weirdest thing she'd heard all day. " _What_?"

"Oh, did you think I didn't notice that magic trick? Froze that demon into a proper icicle and didn't think twice about it. Lass, if this ragtag bunch doesn't keep you, I will." Qamar waved his spoon at her before he took a particularly vicious bite of that chunky substance they all prayed was stew.

Cassandra made a rude noise. "Herald, that is not how this works. You can not force someone to work for you, and you can not decide who she does and does not court." The woman waved a hand at Jane. "Do not joke, not about that. A maiden's heart is her own, and you won't interfere with it."

Varric snorted. "Why Seeker, I didn't know you were such a romantic."

"I do not think you quite understand the situation, Herald," Solas sighed as he sipped at the crude mug in his hands. "She is untrained, unrestrained, and just as likely to freeze _you_ as any demon she encounters. Her romantic inclinations come second to that."

Jane flipped the blanket back over her head like it would protect her from this conversation, doing her best to shrink into a ball and avoid the thing entirely. The group bickered among themselves, and Jane tried her best to tune it all out.

And she stayed curled in a ball, exhausted beyond all words, she finally slept.

Jane woke, still curled in a ball, and covered in the scratchy wool blanket. Someone had tucked it up to her chin and she had drawn her knees up to her chin and let her wings flap over the edge of the cot to drag on the floor. There was a thick carpet laid across the floor that helped her ground herself as she sat up, eyes bleary and she stretched muscles she didn't even remember having.

The tent only dampened the morning light and left a bright line of it where the flaps didn't quite meet. Jane yawned wide enough for her back molars to glint in the hazy light, stretching her arms above her head and her wings far and wide, popping her joints loud enough to make her wince. Waking up in a tent was a new experience, one that Jane was probably going to need to rapidly acclimatize to if the overall stance of her new friends was to be trusted.

One day she would have shoes that would fit over her new toe talon situation and wouldn't crush her feathers. The arches of her feet were now too malformed to shove her shoes on, not with the bone spur and little talon on her heel in the way. If she curled her toes up, maybe she could fit something. In the meantime, Jane would have to mince her way through the fine art of walking with her still new wings outstretched for balance.

There was a reason why Dennit had been so swift to make sure her feet weren't damaged by whatever had happened to her, and why she was cursed to move so very slowly. The little patch of feathers that had begun to grow and spread from the small of her back almost bent against the cot as she sat up, but fell back into place with a little wiggle of her hips. If she clenched her muscles in the right way, the feathers would tense and rise with each twitch, but she still wasn't used to that feeling and relied on good old gravity instead.

She had slept in her clothes. Her skirts were wrinkled and messy, but her hack job of a shirt had held together nicely at her neck and waist. So at least she hadn't disgracefully shown bits of herself to the world that no one but God, Jesus, Caroline, and her mother had ever seen. Jane had managed to maintain at least that much decency. She hated the fact that her back had to be left entirely exposed in order for her to even attempt to cover her shame, but beggars couldn't be choosers when they weren't the ones who made the clothes in the first place.

Her mother would have called her a no good, two-bit piece of trailer trash hussy that'd never get a husband because she flaunted what the good Lord said needed to be covered and hadn't the lick of sense to pretend to be pretty in all the ways that mattered.

Jane hadn't liked her mother much, and seeing her again at Caroline's wedding had been a game of shame and avoidance.

So she straightened her clothes and pulled the blanket off the cot, wrapping it around as much of her upper body as she could. There were men here who looked at her in ways Caroline had always told her was dangerous, and Jane wasn't about to rely on the good graces of strangers to keep their eyes to themselves. She rolled her shoulders under her pilfered new shawl, and Jane ducked out of the tent to face her first real day with these people.

The sun was up, and that meant she needed to make sure Apple had been taken care of. She'd never be able to live with herself if this bunch of strangers so much as laid a finger out of place on Apple's hide.

Or, at least, that was her plan. Instead, Jane made it across the little camp to see all the horses saddled and green-clad bodies milling about with bags stuffed full of unnameable things that were destined to be strapped to the only two horses that mattered. Jane wasn't sure when her horse had been demoted back to being nothing more than a beast of burden and wasn't sure she liked it. But these were her people now, and Jane understood the concept of sacrificing for the greater good more than anyone else. So she bit back her protest and simply made her way to her horse's head and smoothed the palm of her bare hand over Apple's nose.

"Hello, Apple. Did you have a good morning?" Jane pressed her forehead against Apple's face as the horse lowered her head with a snort and a toss of her mane, careful to keep her talons away from the horse's face while she gave Apple the closest thing to a hug that she could manage. "Yes, I missed you too. Did the nice people take good care of you?" Jane gave a little smile as Apple snorted into her collarbone, ruffling her feathers until she could feel the heat of Apple's breath.

The sound of a throat clearing behind her was enough to make her jump, a whisp of cold leaking from her lips as she squawked. "A moment of your time before we head out, little one."

Something about Solas made Jane afraid, a mouse caught in the lion's paws. "Oh. Yessir." She bobbed her head and stepped back from Apple with a resigned smile. Jane knew how schools worked. When a teacher called you out, it was best to just agree and go instead of arguing or questioning it. After all, apparently, he was the professional magician and she was to be his one and only pupil in the most ridiculous tutoring session of all time. She fell into place in front of him, head ducked as she unconsciously tried to make herself look just a little bit smaller.

This? This was familiar territory.

Solas turned on his heel and Jane scurried right after him. Two steps back and a bit to the rear, as she tried not to draw attention because no one wanted to talk to Jane. She clutched at the blanket, thankful that it was long enough to cover the longest of her feathers. Feathers that hadn't been that long before she slept. But who was she to know how fast magic feathers grew in this strange dream? Solas cleared his throat once more, and she snapped to attention with a peep. "I'm sorry!"

He simply hummed. "I expect that you will pay proper attention to your studies if we are to make a proper mage of you." Solas held his hands out, palms up, and waited. "We shall see what we can learn now that we have a moment."

Jane didn't like this. But she put her hands over his anyway, his long fingers brushing against the tendons of her wrists, and tried not to flinch when his palms began to warm under hers. Jane tried to whip her hands away and he frowned until she put her hands back.

"Now. Close your eyes."

Obediently, her eyes snapped shut and she squeezed them tight enough to cause sparks behind her eyelids.

"Breathe in deep. Don't think. Reach in deep. Now, _listen_."

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

_In through the nose._ _Out through the mouth._

"Can you feel it? That thing under your skin?"

_Don't stop to listen to the screams._

_Don't let them catch you._

_Run._

_Hey, Jane?_

_Do you remember me?_

"Remember the demon. The cold. You have to reach for the cold."

_Oh my God, Jane. There's no way you can do anything by yourself._

_Don't you remember who you are?_

_In through the nose._

_Out through the mouth._

_Trust me, just like always._

"Jane! Focus on the cold. Deep down, until the cold is all you can feel."

_Out._

_Through._

_The._

_Mouth._

_JANE!_

She sighed out a single word. " _Caroline."_

She breathed. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Breathe with the cold gripping her lungs and filling her hollow bones with a flurry that turned her blood to slurry and slush.

_And the world is ice at our command._

From her fingertips to her toes, all she knew was the silence of fresh snow on a winter morning. The grass crackled under her bare feet, sticking in the gaps between her toes and shattering on her talons as she tensed. The world behind her eyes was white and blues, a swirl of splotchy watercolor dragged into frighteningly vivid technicolor. She breathed hoarfrost and mist, and the cold was everything 

“Now, hold the cold inside. Remember that you are not only the cold in your veins."

She was cold itself, winter trapped under paper-thin skin in a vessel far too small. Her body was a glacier, her tears hail, and her breath diamond dust. Time did not matter, not when all could be frozen and kept for all eternity in her grasp. The ground beneath her feet was neve, too warm, and new to become ice. Her hair iced over in foggy white strands that blew out of her mussed braid.

"Jane. Jane!"

So cold she shivered, lips turned blue, and fingers went rigid. Couldn't he feel the winter? Didn't he understand that all she was and could be was the turn of seasons? How could he; when Caroline was right there with them and pressed the cold deeper into her core. Caroline wanted it and it was all up to Jane to make it happen.

" _Enough._ "

Something snapped inside her, warmth flooding back fast enough to make her whimper Her wings snapped up and open in some primal attempt to make the threat go away, all of her feathers puffed up as she cried out. Solas had removed his hands from hers and she dropped to her knees like a puppet with its strings cut. The ground beneath her was cold despite the season, and she could see hoarfrost spread out like a fresh white carpet over the grass.

The camp was silent as the grave. Or it was until someone whistled low and long, and Jane did her best to throw the blanket over her head to hide at least a modicum of her shame. That wasn't supposed to happen, and even Jane knew that.

Solas knelt before her, staff in hand and braced against his shoulder, with a disappointed frown on his lips. "Little one. Why did you not let the spell go?"

Let it go? How could she? How did you tell the earth not to turn and the stars not to shine? Was she supposed to capture lightning in a bottle and a cloud in a basket? There was no _letting go_ when the cold slipped out of the crevices of her terrified soul.

"Solas." The crunch of frozen grass under someone's feet was enough to make Jane curl up even more. "Is everything all right?" Qamar was kindness incarnate and she never expected him to care. His hand was heavy on her head, fingers splayed out to cup the crown of her head like something fragile. "Just wanted to check-in and see how we're doing, since we're about to head out."

Solas looked up at him with his same level of casual indifference. "This may be more difficult than anticipated. It appears that my new pupil possesses all the power of an adult mage with the control of a toddler."

"Explain."

"It is simple. Jane possesses an impressive affinity for winter magics. But, she has no capability to control herself. She either embraces the power of winter and wills it to surround her, or she has nothing at all."

Jane wanted to bury herself in a pit and drag the earth back over herself. This was worse than every parent-teacher conference because she knew neither of them particularly well and both seemed to expect things from her that would be forever out of her reach.

"I have felt the shape of her magic, and it is like nothing else. She throws herself into her magic and leaves nothing of herself to ground her against the temptations of the Fade. I have never seen someone quite so adept at casting Stillness and a barrier simultaneously."

Qamar snorted. "Turning the world into a winter wonderland is a barrier?"

Solas had fallen entirely into a lecturing rhythm. "Of course. What better barrier than to cocoon oneself in the very spirit of cold itself? Of note, you will notice that this place may have frozen... but Jeanmarie has not. Chilled from the air itself, but she takes no true damage from her own magic. Her Stillness is quite a marvel as well. Would that we had more time to explore it."

"Not today. We've got a delivery to make to Haven, and those three would have my head if I didn't bring them these horses and Dennet's promise of even more horses to come. Come on lass. We've got things to do and you're probably the only one who can get Varric on a horse without him falling off."

Jane would rather have done literally anything else. But she was too used to following the orders of those with more spinal fortitude than herself to protest. And so she picked herself off the ground, brushed the snow from her skirts, and did her level best to pretend her morning had never happened.


	6. Three Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It'd be... such a shame if we ended up with an extra chapter. Such a shame.
> 
> All right folks. We're getting the hell out of the Hinterlands. I hate it there.
> 
> "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."   
> ― Buddha

They did not end up putting her behind Varric on their way back to Haven. As it turned out, there wasn't much of a chance for them to even begin heading back to their home base of sorts. All it took was one green-clad scout to come running up with a raven on their arm and everyone turned into a whirl of milling panic and snapping orders. Jane, for her part, settled into Apple's saddle and simply waited.

The scout sidled up to Qamar's side and they had a whispered conference that ended with the larger horned man throwing his hands up with a barked "Well, fuck it then!" He spun on one armored heel and stomped his way to the group, making the horses stamp their hooves nervously as he approached. In the interest of everyone's safety, Qamar had graciously instructed Cassandra to kindly take over the use and handling of Dennet's loaned mount while he proceeded on foot.

Or, as he had called it, the way his tama had brought him into this world and the way he was going to leave it.

He stopped at Cassandra's ankle and stared up at her. "Seems we've got some errands to run in the back ass end of the Hinterlands. Somebody reached out to our darling Spymaster, and now we get to go make some new friends and punch some new faces." He looked positively thrilled as he blinked. At least, as thrilled as a man gone dead inside could be.

Varric, busy trying to make Jane laugh as she squirmed on Apple's back, barked a laugh. "You've got a fun way of making friends, Adaar."

Qamar gave him a grim smile. "Ha. Ha. Ha. Everybody just loves me." One hand passed a slip of parchment up to Cassandra and he waited for her to read it before he took it back. "Much as I just love to make new friends by punching them with the fun parts of my sword... we did come here for a reason. And that reason is done."

Cassandra frowned. "And now we have a problem."

Both of them turned at once to look back at the Jane with her awful blanket shawl, and both sighed. "We can't take her with us. And we sure as shit can't spend our time keeping her out of the way. Not with all the rogue templars and crazy mages running around the countryside." Cassandra simply nodded at Qamar's words, her lips pursed and her spine rigid as she read the piece of parchment again.

"No. We can not allow it," the woman declared.

Varric stepped forward like he was about to throw himself between Jane and whatever Qamar and Cassandra had planned in the space of a moment and their eyebrows, and Solas's head jerked around to stare at Qamar like he had grown two heads. "Herald. She's just a kid."

"This might surprise you, Varric, but I have a daughter about her age. I'm not taking her with us, and I'm not about to let the lass die in this void forsaken place." He snapped gauntleted fingers until Jane met his eyes with a surprised peep. "We've got a horse and a message to get back to Haven. But there are a whole lot of people around here who will _kill you_ the minute they see you."

She gripped the reins hard enough to turn her knuckles white and make her talons start digging into her palms. Her knees tightened around Apple's ribs and made the horse prance nervously on the spot. "I'm sorry," she whispered into her chest feathers.

Qamar gave her as much of a reassuring smile as he could. "Don't be, lass. People around here don't much like people that look like we do. One ox-man to a bird-girl, you're going to deal with this your whole life. But, we're in quite the mess because of it."

"I... I could stay here?"

"That, little lass, isn't going to get our dear Commander and Spymaster these horses they need to get our little ragtag bunch of bastards moving at a decent pace. And, much as we all hate it, you're part of the deal. We get horses if we take you with us and find your family. Can't do that if you're dead." Qamar squashed what hopes she had in one brutal statement.

Cassandra turned in the saddle enough to look back at Jane. "You are a single untrained mage that is now a part of the Inquisition. We are responsible for your safety."

The horned man stepped closer to Jane and Apple, just close enough to be in arms reach of Apple's backside. "And I'm sorry for this, lass, I really am. But you're going to need to hold on."

The sound of a gauntlet slapping the horse's haunches would haunt Jane for the rest of her days. But, true to her life as a carthorse, Apple reacted as she always had. It was all Jane could do to squeeze her legs and keep her seat, some subconscious part of her making her tuck her body down to minimize the drag even as her wings snapped to fold like a falcon mid-leap. Later, when things were quiet and she had the time to process properly, Jane would marvel at how she hadn't died.

But at that moment there was only a wordless screech of panic, a dusting of snow that melted as quickly as it appeared, and the back end of a carthorse running headlong down the trail.

Cassandra turned her mount with a practiced nudge of her knee and tug of the reins. "I will see her safe and return when I am able."

Qamar merely grinned at her and turned back to the rest of the little ragtag bunch as Cassandra nudged the fidgeting stallion into a dead gallop to catch up with Jane and Apple. "Right to Haven as fast as hooves can get her. You were saying, Varric?"

Apple liked running. The horse, however, did not like running where there were creatures that wanted nothing more than to chase and bite at her. The path from the farm to Haven was littered with them, and some hazy part of Jane would forever pretend it never happened.

Hooves tore up the dirt as Apple galloped down the path. The thunder behind came quickly on her heels and brought Cassandra to her rescue. If she could even call it a rescue when Cassandra had no intention of stopping Apple from running pell-mell down the path. She rose in the saddle to put her knees to her chest and cut down on aerodynamics and help Apple run a little bit faster for just a little bit further.

The wings on her back twinged and snapped out with a feeling like taking off her heels after a long day in the office, and she would sigh with relief if she didn’t see the shape of the thing out of the corner of her eye. It didn't take more than a thought for her to start panicking about it, but she tamped down on the scream that threatened to bubble out of her lips.

Screaming was a terrible idea, in hindsight, because screaming seemed to bring out the bad things.

Jesus take the wheel.

There was a special place in Hell for God’s children who did terrible things in life, and Jane wanted exactly no part in that particular branch of madness. But, clearly, she had committed some grave sin that led to this moment.

Blonde hair and a white dress turned rusty, eyes wide open in a face gone waxy and blank. The features were indiscernible at a distance and with the decay already having set in. Maggots crawled out of an open mouth with lips shriveled against cheekbones, making the molding skin writhe in the corner of her eye. Its arms hung loose, mottled skin already beginning to mummify under the bright noon sun. The dried blood that trickled down the heavy branch piercing through the body's middle had stained the tree a muddy brown.

The buzzing of flies and insects around the far too familiar corpse would haunt her in her sleep.

Jane would know that dress anywhere.

She never knew what a charnel house smelled like before that day. The wind brought her the smell of bad cheese, sick and sweet, and she gagged as they rode past.

It would not be the first body she saw that day, nor would it be the last. Cassandra was a strict taskmaster that brooked no dissension and only allowed the pace to change just enough to keep the horses from running until their hearts exploded in their heaving chests. Froth lathered their necks and Jane's face burned from the wind and sun but Cassandra would not let them stop.

The roar of battle rang out bright and clear, the sizzle of magic clashing against tempered steel. But still, still Cassandra drove them to run around the bend. Across the bridge and by broken wooden crates with mangled bodies scattered among them they rode and rode. Jane would forever remember the reds and golds of the leaves on the trees and the way they blended with the red of blood splashed across the ground.

They passed the ruins of a castle fortress, the aura of rage and hatred twisting the air and turning it into a tide of bloodshed and warfare. She could feel it when she breathed. Her head ached with it, throbbed in time with the sparks of lightning and fire that crested over the horizon. The world glowed in technicolor, three strips of color snapping into glistening stereoscopic perfection. There was magic in the air and it called her to join a choir recital she hadn't even thought to practice for. She breathed fog as her heart thundered in her throat, terror turning her eyes wide and her blood to ice.

Blood spilt in violence called to cold fear with the promise of power and impossible wishes. All she had to do was reach out just a single hand and she would have all the means to make the world stop on its axis and shove world peace down their throats like it was April 25th and her last name was Freebush. Meaner than a two-headed snake and more tempting than the Devil Himself, she could feel the siren song crawling up her skin and making hoarfrost of her sweat.

There were secrets spread across the little valley, whispers of power that cried out for her to give in just a little bit to the glittering allure.

_Can you feel it, Jane?_

_We were meant for this._

_Can't you hear it calling?_

She turned her head enough to feel the winter creep over her shoulder, drawn into the world at the hands of someone else. She wished it wasn't so cold, didn't pull at her core so quickly with such abandon, but this winter chill is familiar. Like one snowflake sensing the presence of another snowflake, drawn together with thousands of others to make a carpet of snow. She is a magnet drawn to the cardinal north and the power sings in her veins.

_Just a little bit._

_In through the nose._

_Out through the mouth._

Cassandra shouted once without breaking her mount out of its dead gallop with some masterful bit of knightly training that made her into a mounted goddess of legend. Her sword sung out of its sheath in a glimmering arc of steel, and down came the blade like a bolt of vengeance.

There's no winter to be found there in the Hinterlands, only the early stages of fall. Cassandra looked back at Jane and narrowed her eyes. She said something that Jane couldn't understand over the thunder of hooves and the sound of Apple's heavy breathing. But there was winter still, there in the whites of Jane's eyes and the spill of fog from her lips, and Cassandra knew it. The sweet call still resonated deep inside, and Jane could barely keep her eyes open against the pull.

_It's so easy._

_In through the nose._

_Out through the mouth._

_Come on, Jane, you can do-_

The world snapped into focus, colors washed out and muted like she was plunged back into the darkness. Her tongue was dry and her throat cold, but the press of winter lost its grip on her feathers. Jane's thighs tightened once more to keep her seat on Apple's back, her teeth rattling in her mouth, and her bones vibrating with every step along the path. Cassandra nodded when Jane breathed out nothing but her own breath and turned back to face the path.

Cassandra Pentaghast was a one-woman cavalry, an unstoppable weapon that allowed no obstacle to stand in their way.

Not that there were many who tried. The mages and templars were too busy fighting each other to try to stop two figures galloping by. If the two groups had bothered to stop fighting each other long enough to coordinate, they could have stopped the two women and taken them for everything they were worth.

But many of them had seen Cassandra and Jane coming, counted the dead bodies the armored woman left in her wake, and thought twice.

The people of the Crossroads knew they were coming, and the familiar green uniforms of the Inquisition's scouts had cleared the way in advance. Jane felt like a rodeo star, turned Apple around a barrel, and leaned into the turn as Cassandra began pulling her own horse into a slower pace for the long haul. Both horses breathed like bellows when she finally allowed it. Down from a gallop to a canter, then down to a trot and a walk. Dennet's gifted horse loved it, nearly prancing in place with the urge to keep going.

Apple, on the other hand, did not appreciate what had just happened. The carthorse hadn't been bred to do something like this, and it showed.

Cassandra sheathed her sword with a scowl. "You! Bring her your horse!" The scout she pointed to yelped and scurried off, partly out of awe at being spoken to by the Right Hand of the Divine and partly out of a sense of self-preservation.

Jane slid from the saddle with only a slight wobble. For once, she was glad that whatever awful thing had happened to her in this dream had made her lose so much of her body weight, or she would have dragged Apple down that much faster.

The horse he brought was at least of better stock than Apple, but clearly far inferior to Dennet's horse. After her time on the farm, Jane had begun to have at least a surface level of knowledge and appreciation of horseflesh. And the strawberry roan the scout brought for Jane to ride? The muscle tone was acceptable, gait only a little off-center, and a laundry list of a million other tiny details. But the saddle wasn't standard, nor were the halter decorations or saddlebags. Clearly, this scout had brought this horse with him from home when he joined the Inquisition, and Jane silently swore to keep as good care of the roan as Dennet had drilled into her.

But it wasn't her horse and she didn't have the time to be particular like Dennet had taught her. Instead, all she could do was mount up and hang on for the second part of her wild journey with Cassandra at the helm.

The ride from the Crossroads to Haven had been uneventfully boring enough for Jane to almost become lulled to sleep by the motion of the horse cantering beneath her. Thankfully, Cassandra said as little about it as possible. But she didn't allow Jane much time to process much at all about the wooden buildings and fences that made up Haven proper. Instead, she tilted her head in the universal sign to follow, and Jane did what she did best.

Large, stone, and overbearingly religious. That was all she could think as they came up the log paved and frozen path. And at the same, she tried to shrink away from the angry whispers and stares.

"An abomination!"

"Lady Cassandra, what brings you back?"

'First an oxman, now we've got a birdgirl."

"Agreed. Clearly, this Inquisition is taking anything with a pulse."

"Andraste's tits that's a nice horse."

"Wait a moment, is that a mage?"

"Put the abomination in chains!"

Jane tried in vain to cover herself with the blanket. Too little, too late, they had already seen what should never have been seen. Her feathers fluffed in her terror, and she could feel the icy grip of cold in the back of her throat. 

Cassandra frowned. "Control yourself. You will not be harmed here."

Jane shivered but nodded her understanding. "Ok." She could trust Cassandra. Cassandra kept the cold at bay and the ringing in her ears from overwhelming her. So she stepped a little closer and held her hope to her chest.

And she was doing just fine until the massive wooden doors of the building slammed open before them. Jane couldn't help her tiny peep of terror as she dove behind Cassandra.

"Andraste preserve me! Is there a reason why all of you are clustered around like hens instead of going about your day?" The man frightened Jane into grabbing at the back of Cassandra's belt, her wings stretching wide as if instincts could override common sense. "Ah, Cassandra. You're back early. I take it all is not well in the Hinterlands."

The aforementioned woman snorted. "You could say that."

Light, bright and unrelenting, and an absence of warmth were the only warning Jane had before Cassandra all but dragged her in front of the man. "Adaar sends his greetings and a new recruit for the Inquisition."

Jane stuck one taloned hand out just enough from the blanket to give a tiny wave. She peered up and up from her makeshift covering and swallowed down a dry sob. Blonde, scruffy, covered in armor and a mantle that made him look like a lion. Jane was not equipped for this sort of fancy occasion. "Um.... hello?"

The hard tone in his voice softened just a little bit at her squeaked greeting. "Hello. And who might you be?"

And a little was all Jane needed to peek just a little more out from beneath her shawl. If Qamar had sent her with Cassandra, and Cassandra brought her to this man, then clearly he was someone that she could talk to. "I'm Jane."

"Well, Jane. Welcome to the Inquisition." The gentle look in his eyes all but vanished when he snapped his gaze to the armored woman behind her. "And what exactly would Adaar like me to do with Jane?"

"The same thing you do with every new mage: record her existence in the archive. Jeanmarie Smythe, manifested Winter." Cassandra was blunt and Jane could appreciate that.

The man rolled his eyes skyward and visibly seemed to count to ten for patience. "You must be joking." One armored arm swept out to indicated the full breadth of Haven. "In case it escaped Adaar's notice, we haven't exactly a Circle to house her. And, might I add, a lack of active Templars to watch her."

Cassandra gave him a thin-lipped grimace. "Cullen. Ask her to take the blanket off."

Jane did not like where this was going and gripped the blanket all the tighter as she stepped carefully and slowly away from the pair. "No thank you."

Cullen, as was apparently his name, turned to look at her with a calculating eye and a firm tone that was the sort Jane had always jumped to first. Here was someone in charge, probably with a badge somewhere, and he knew it. "And why, Jane, must I ask you to remove the blanket?"

The whispers rose in pitch and Jane seemed to deflate on the spot. "Perhaps we should speak inside." Cullen and Cassandra shared a look before the other woman all but shepherded Jane into the building. He held the door open for them expectantly, and Jane could only hold her breath at the wave of warmth and incense. Cassandra led the way through the candle smoke and dim light before she wrenched open a somewhat dusty looking door.

The man scratched the back of his head. "Forgive me. We have not required the use of this room in quite some time." It was obvious that no one had been in the room, long enough to accumulate cobwebs in the corners and a fine layer of dust on the strangely patterned floor.

Jane felt warm, warmer than she had been since this mad dream had begun, as she toed her way into the room. Not that the room was all that occupied, nothing more than a plain cot bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. What was extraordinary was the marking on the floor that she had thought was some fancy carpet but was actually a fine inlay of metal and faintly glowing rocks. She sighed, a tension she hadn't even known existing seeming to fall from her body.

"Ah. Yes. That." Cullen cleared his throat awkwardly. "Typically this room would house children, but I thought it may be prudent for a moment of calm."

Jane's head tilted uncontrollably as she looked back at him in confusion. "Why?"

He hummed, his hand resting comfortably on his sword. "This room was created to contain, calm, and protect those mages who have no control until such time as they are moved to a Circle. Or, it was."

Oh. Then he could understand what Cassandra was trying to say. That she's a mage now and has what Solas called the control of a toddler. This was a room that was built for people like _her_ because they couldn't be let out in public. Down came the blanket, her eyes squeezed shut so she couldn't see the look on his face as she snapped her wings out as far as they could go. Ears perked up and out, all her feathers on display. And there were more of them than there had been last week or the night before, almost like something had been snapped into place and all of her was realizing what she could and should become.

The sound of a sharp inhale and the clank of armor was all the reaction she needed to reach for her blanket again. Qamar was right. People didn't like how people like them looked, and they would treat her differently just because of it.

Warm leather stopped her, a single hand laid over her fingers that pushed gently down. "Maker have mercy. What manner of creature are you?"

Cassandra gave a weary sigh. "Solas claims this was an accident. A frightened mage that attempted to escape..."

"Ended up like this. Well, at least it doesn't look awful." Cullen's fingers against her feather tipped ears did not feel like the violation Solas's had. He was gentle in his examination but snatched his hand back like she had burned him when her ears wiggled against his fingertips. The smile he gave her was as brittle as her feathers. "No bleeding sores and screaming about killing us all anyway."

"I'm sorry." That was all she knew how to do: apologize. Clearly, what she had done was wrong and she should never do it again. Not that she knew how she had done it in the first place.

"According to Solas, the Rift interfered with her attempt to turn into a bird." Cassandra was a blunt woman, and Jane could see the reassuring ghost of Caroline in every word.

Cullen bit his lip trying not to laugh at the ludicrous thought of a mage botching a spell this badly. "A bird? Of all the creatures... not even one with use."

"Solas also says it can not be undone."

"A fine mess you've landed yourself in, Jane. She'll have to be watched for signs of possession." Cullen balanced his weight on the balls of his feet as he stared down at Jane, a contemplative look on his face. "There are few who would suit. I'll have them assigned shortly. Until then, you remain in this room."

The tears that sprang to the corners of her eyes had Cullen wincing, but Jane couldn't stop it. She had come all this way and done everything that had been asked of her. And for her reward, all she got was a bad dream, a horrible mistake, and now she would spend her days in a prison cell. "I understand." She sniffled, trying to hold back her tears while the two of the most competent people she had ever met were there to watch.

Cullen cleared his throat awkwardly. "I ah... I'll have something sent for you to eat." He turned on his heel and left as quickly as Cassandra would let him. The woman nodded her head in turn toward Jane as she left, and Jane caught just a fraction of their conversation as they left.

"Maker's breath - Cassandra, that's an abomination."

And oh, Jane couldn't stop herself from falling to her knees and crying if she even tried. Alone and imprisoned, with no court in this dream to set her free from a crime she didn't even know how or when she committed.

_Oh, poor little Jane._

_Don't worry._ _I'm still with you._

_Now. Take a deep breath._

_In through the nose._

_Out through the mouth._

"Oh God. Caroline, what are we supposed to do now?"


	7. What Evil Comes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.”
> 
> ― Elizabeth Gaskell
> 
> Rough ride this time lovely readers. Please remember that I am a monster and the canon source material has a particular... thing. A thing this tag forgets a lot so....
> 
> Bringing it back in the name of the tag revolution for a one chapter stand.
> 
> Warnings for torture, and emotional and physical abuse.

She sat in the corner, knees to her chest and wings limp in the dust. He said this room would protect and calm her, but Jane did not feel like she was being protected. Not when she could hear the whispers outside her door. They thought she couldn't hear them through the thick wood... but she could just enough and the only thing she could do about it was cry.

Someone had put something heavy in front of the door that Jane couldn't move. Not that it mattered, not when the heavy iron knob had an equally heavy iron padlock on the other side of the door that had been quite loudly and rudely snapped shut when Cassandra and Cullen left the room.

Jane wasn't Caroline. She didn't have a bobby pin and a worn-out laundromat card stuffed down her bra to jimmy open locks and get herself in and out of places she had no business being in. Jane didn't even have enough breast to hide a laundromat card without at least one half of it sticking out of the bra cup. She was a proud member of the Itty-Bitty-Titty Committee and all the ramifications that came with it.

She rubbed damp feathers against her red-rimmed eyes and sniffled, toes curling against the stone floor and scratching long lines in the dust. Jane had wrapped her pilfered blanket around her shoulders like the wool would protect her from the world. Her hair had long since fallen out of the braid that had been so carefully plaited what felt like an age and an era ago. Taloned fingers gripped her arms hard enough to bruise, and Jane couldn't help the nervous flicks her wings made and the swirl of dust each twitch stirred up. She sniffled, rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, and returned to her desperate huddle.

The sound of the lock opening and the heavy thing being lifted up and aside had her scrambling to her feet, wings flapping hard once then twice enough to help her lurch ungracefully upright. Fingers on the wall to brace herself, talons digging into the soft plaster that covered the stone walls, and Jane faced the door with her head meekly bowed.

"Time for supper, mage." The clank of armor and the brusque finality of the woman who set the tray down on the cot was enough to have Jane snapping her eyes up to watch the woman move. Something about her unsettled Jane and she couldn't quite put her finger on it. The woman slammed her hand on the cot, making the wooden bowl rattle and Jane jump. "Now, Smythe. I haven't got all day."

Jane's arms shook as she reached out for the bowl, and she carefully cupped it in her palms. The woman's glare was enough to have her tipping it to her lips. But not even her rage helped Jane overcome the odd texture and flavor of the bowl's contents. It was greasy and watery all at once, as appetizing as wet cardboard, and smelled and tasted exactly like cat urine, and Jane wanted nothing more than to toss the bowl right back at the woman. Instead, like every good southern lady, Jane gently set the bowl back down and slid it forward. "No thank you. I'm not hungry."

The woman shrugged. "Suit yourself. You're not getting anything else until dawn." She took the bowl and tilted it to the floor, letting the contents splatter onto the dusty stones. "You'll be glad of that later."

Jane gulped nervously. "Ah, are you the one-"

The woman grabbed at Jane's hair, hauling her up and across the cot so that she could lay a resounding slap across Jane's face. "You will speak only when spoken to." Tears sprang anew to Jane's eyes, her cheek throbbing even as the woman shook her like a terrier did a rat. "Am I making myself clear, mage?"

"Y-yes," Jane managed to sob.

Back came the woman's gauntleted hand, square across Jane's other cheek. "You will refer to me as Ser. Say it. Ser, I understand, Ser."

This, this Jane actually understood. "Ser, I... I understand, Ser." This was every bad boyfriend and even worse husband, only this was the woman who was responsible for looking after Jane's well being. This? This horrible thing that had become her life? This was being a mage.

_Oh Jane. You knew it was inevitable._

Ser shook her once more before she threw Jane away from her with as much affection as one did a dead rat. "Twice a day, you will be fed through that slot there on the door. When you are finished, you will knock once and step back against the wall with your hands at your shoulders." She pointed at the wall Jane had been curled up against with no emotion on her weathered face. "When anyone comes to open this door, you will assume the same position until such time as told otherwise. Understand?"

_Told you so._

_You should have frozen them all._

Jane nodded her head, snot running down her face and bubbling with each shaking breath. "Ser, I understand, Ser."

The woman nodded, her no-nonsense steel and iron washed bun not even budging as she moved. "Good. Once a day you will be allowed out to empty your chamber bucket in the latrine. If you run, you will be punished. You will not like punishment, Smythe."

Numbly, Jane nodded again. But she had not been spoken to, and so she kept her mouth shut, no matter how much her lips quivered and her cheeks stung.

"It has been brought to my attention that you will be being trained by the elven apostate. You will be allowed to attend those lessons for as long as you behave and do not attempt to escape." She sneered, Ser's opinion on this whole process clear. "Normally, I'd have you bled for your phylactery, but the Commander claims the apostate refuses to produce them. Some Maker forsaken filth about mage rights. Lucky you."

Ser swept her arm to indicate the room. "This place will be your home until you're Harrowed, Tranquil, or dead. Whichever comes to pass." The coldness in her eyes was enough to make Jane really not want to ask what either of those terms meant.

_They'll try to take your soul._

_But I'll never let them._

_You belong to me._

_Forever and ever, amen._

The templar smiled and it didn't reach her cold grey eyes. "So long as you behave, you will be rewarded. If you misbehave... punishment will be meted out. Do you understand, mage?"

Her hands were cold against her face, a blissful balm against her throbbing flesh. "Ser, I understand, Ser."

"I see you can be taught. Good. This will not be the pretty life you knew. You will be brought to heel, and your magic will be controlled. Just as the Maker and his Bride willed it, magic will serve man." Ser snapped her fingers and pointed at the wall, and Jane all but fell in her rush to return to her corner. The templar nodded once more before she spun on one armored heel, pounding her fist against the door to be let out.

And all Jane could do was weep.

Twice a day like clockwork she was fed the same godforsaken gruel. Ser claimed it was all the resources they wanted to waste on a useless mage like her, and Jane had come to believe it in her very soul. She was even lucky enough for Ser to hunt down something more substantial for her to wear: a fur-lined robe just like a real mage with the back hacked out for her rapidly growing wings. Or, at least she thought they were rapidly growing in what sense of time and growth she had left. Shoes weren't provided, not that her odd feet could fit in them, because the skin of her toes was thick enough to not be bothered by the slush on the ground.

Not that the cold really bothered her. Caroline induced common sense said that of course even the most untutored of winter mages could manage to avoid being affected by a cold this basic. Really, there just wasn't a point in considering it when the highlight of her day was when she was allowed to take her bucket to the latrine and breathe in the crisp cold of air outside the Chantry. She settled into the schedule Ser set for her without complaint or question. It was less stringent than the A/B block schedule her high school had operated on, and if Jane could manage that with three Advanced Placement classes every year and helping Caroline with all of her homework and cheerleading routines, then this was a cakewalk.

At least she could catch up on the sleep that growing properly sized wings seemed to require. Or, she would have, if it wasn't for the tiniest and most important detail.

Just before breakfast, Jane was taken out for her morning ablutions. Down the Chantry path, past the soldiers beginning their training, head down with a hastily arranged wimple to hide her face, and wings folded beneath a baggy robe so none could see an inch of her pinions, straight to the latrines to empty her bucket. And then it was back to the Chantry to take her place in front of the many sisters as the Revered Mother Giselle gave her morning lecture before the Chantry doors.

Front and center, on her knees with her hands cupped in supplication. Jane learned that she was expected to behave in absolute supplication at all times right next to the lay-sisters and in front of the sacred Chantry Mothers. She learned the proper positions quickly, and only needed her face shoved into the almost frozen rain barrel the one time to pick up the rules. Which was quite a pleasant breather from the sometimes needed flicks of the switch to the back of her knees.

Ser was very proud of her the next morning.

"Blessed are they who stand before

The corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.

Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.

Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.

In their blood the Maker's will is written."

The Revered Mother Giselle was very good at public speaking. She enunciated her vowels and consonants, her diction precise and immaculate. Each word was a souled thing that blessed the parishioner with the wisdom of the Maker and his Bride, and it was Jane's delight to be so graced. Ser had made that point very clear. But that was like trying to tell Jane's grandmother how to suck eggs.

Church every Sunday for twenty-five years with every aunty, matron, and esteemed (sometimes blessedly hungover) member of the Masonic Temple within twenty minutes of Malvern Hills was a fair sight better at teaching someone how to act properly in church than anything a templar could ever do. Because make no mistake, despite there being no roof over the congregation and several members of it armored and armed, this was a church to make the Maker sit up and pay attention. Or, more importantly, to cram it into the damned abomination's head exactly what kind of sin she was committing by simply breathing.

And then when the sermon was done, Jane would be allowed to get to her feet and make her way back to her little room where she would be shut in while her breakfast was fetched. Ser made her recite the verses for an indeterminate amount of time before she would be fed through the slot in the door.

After breakfast, if she had been good enough, she would be allowed to spend a little bit of time outside in the sun before her lessons in reading and writing with the strangely emotionless man with the shining sun branded into his forehead.

Learning the alphabet was more fun than expected, especially since no one ever seemed to care that she walked off with the little bit of charcoal she was allowed. No one cared that she slowly began to cover the plaster of her little room with little sketches of flowers and places from home, charcoal smudged with the tips of her feathers into vines and moonlit reflections. Instead, Thurston began to give her extra bits of charcoal at the end of every lesson.

Jane measured time by the Chant she murmured and the growing spread of her wings when she dared to stretch them on her little walks. It took far longer than she thought for her to be summoned for her first true lesson with Solas, and by then she knew the shape of her feathers, and half of a wall was covered in magnolia bushes and cypress trees.

Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.

_But they will not bind us._

_They cannot stop us._

_Listen well, Jane._

_Breathe in. Now breathe out._

_Remember, I will always love you._

Ser brought her to Solas with her usual scowl, and Jane kept her head bowed until the templar cleared her throat. "Lessons, Smythe. Do not disappoint." The templar took a position as far from the _apostate_ as she could and still keep an eye on her charge.

Solas had the grace to wait until the armored woman turned her back before he spoke. "Little one, you have my sincerest apologies. Would that I had offered you the same protection as my knowledge has granted me." He was gentle as he unwrapped the wimple to let her ears finally wiggle free. He was even gentler as he touched the edge of the black eye Ser had graced her with not that long ago.

Stupid girl, she had forgotten not to look at anyone on her way to the latrine. For his part, Solas seethed quietly as Ser leaned up against a tree that allowed her a decent view of the training ground.

He held his hands up, expectant and quiet, and Jane looked up just enough to slip her taloned fingers onto his palms. "Let us see what they have done to you, da'len."

_Yes. Let him see._

_Show him what we're made of._

Jane didn't understand why the touch of his hands to hers made her begin to cry. Silent even as fat tears rolled down her face, Jane bit her lip as _something_ seemed to poke at her. Old as the forests and wild as the moors, the slow stalk of a predator tempered with wisdom that could only come from age, that thing pressed itself into the crackling cold of her deepest parts. And she breathed nitrogen fog when it skimmed by those little hollowed out parts where her memory of Caroline lurked.

"Ir abelas, da'len."

His grip _burned_ and all Jane could do was _scream_ , her wings snapping out wide and wider as the ageless thing _pushed_ at her cracks until they lined up all shiny and new. It hurt more than anything else as the tender parts of her seemed to burn fire bright, a searing brand against her glacial core.

And all at once, her screaming stopped.

Jane remembered feeling the wind ruffle feathers that hadn't touched the sun in days, her heart hollowed out so the memories swarmed and pushed back against the green darkness that had far too many glowing eyes and teeth that threatened to gobble her up. It lurked behind him, looming dark and knowing with jaws that dripped and a tail that blotted out the sun.

But she was the _song of winter_ while he was the _dire wolf_ and _they would not falter_.

"With me, da'len." Her magic was his and his control was hers as Solas's hands gripped tight on hers. And she breathed when he breathed, her wings arched up and pinions spread wide to feel the wind.

The soldiers quieted, none of them daring to make a sound. It was colder than it had been before, their breath coming in puffs of fog in the pale blue light of thousands of tiny specks of diamond dust.

Jane could feel the thrum of the world beneath her feet, time slowing down in the space of each breath. Ten thousand years in the space of a second, a second spread out over an eternity. And here was _power_ in its purest and most base form, the equations of the world laid out in spreadsheets and scrolled gilt. This was Solas's knowledge: the pillars of the world done up in ancient trigonometry and ages counted by carbon atoms and tree rings.

She gave him the taste of mint juleps and lemonade on sticky hot July afternoons, vanilla ice cream dripping down the sides of the cone. Her power was measured in the weight of ideas, of four score and seven years ago, brother fighting brother over muddied reason and morals. The South remembered, just as sure as the tundra, the knowledge that real courage was knowing that a good conscience was sometimes not the majority opinion.

A songbird existed for nothing more than to show the joys of the world, and they knew that all secrets were beautiful to behold.

A wolf existed to keep the ecosystem in order, and they knew the secret paths in the woods that few dared to tread.

"Good. Now, breathe in. Follow, da'len." The wolf whispered to the baby bird where the safest winds blew, and she turned her face to feel the chill.

_You know what to do._

_Show._

_Them._

_Make them pay._

Her fingers in his palms were loose, talons barely scratching against his skin. It didn't matter, not when he wove the spell so snug and sound that all she needed to do was stretch out to limits she had never tested. The training ground froze, no more and no less, because that was as far as she could go. But there, in that pale blue light that flickered over her skin and turned her feathers white around the edges, there was calm.

This was _magic_ and it was all _hers_.

Jane laughed, a child tasting snowflakes for the first time with her face turned up to watch them fall. She made snowflakes out of nothing, tiny things that glittered and grew to bits of fluff to melt back into nothing on her tongue. And there was joy there, the infectious sort that had some of the younger soldiers reaching out to try to catch light blue glowing snow that vanished when they touched it.

"Excellent. It is a pity that many human mages cannot grasp the beauty of the Winter spells as swiftly. Well done, da'len. You are a credit to your kind." Solas was even with his praise as he taught her the feeling, not even straining as he shaped her channels to allow magic to flow the way she wanted so badly. "For one so young and far from their home and people, it is truly a delight to watch you embrace your gift."

He took a step back after a long moment, his hands dropping out from beneath hers and leaving her standing so alone in the middle of the training grounds. Jane shivered, her fingers turning blue as the spell settled around her shoulders like a yoke. It was a test she had never known that she would ever need to study for, the material in a language where she had just barely learned the basic alphabet.

Jane shook.

But the spell held.

Ser shifted restlessly across the training ground and Jane flinched at the sound. Jane couldn't help but turn her head to check for Ser's approval. But the scowl on Ser's face made Jane pale, the spell twisting just a little in her unspoken panic.

No, no, no. She didn't want to go back so soon. But if she didn't do it right... there was no telling what Ser would do. The spell wavered and wobbled, the light blue flecks falling faster and faster as the power rippled bright through her wings.

The templar took one step forward. "Smythe!"

Jane sobbed in terror, the spell shattering and spreading overhead. She dropped to her knees as the snow raged around her, wings folding around her as her arms went up to cover her head. A whirl of wind centered around her prone form, the snow whipped into a frenzy as a blizzard began to form overhead. "I'm sorry, I'll do better!" The snow swirled into a blizzard, and Ser raised her hand just once. And the blue light faded, the snow drifting down until it suddenly petered out.

The soldiers, startled out of their reverie, murmured amongst themselves. And Solas folded his hands behind his back demurely. "Of course. I had forgotten that human mages required their templars to bring them to heel."

Ser stalked forward to grab Jane by the arm, hauling her to her feet with far more ease than it should have taken. Up and away from Solas, the sneer on her face plain as day. "That's enough out of you, apostate. I'll not have you perverting my charge with your heresy."

A throat cleared, and all was silent.

"Damn, I must be getting old. Because I'm pretty sure it's his job to teach her. You know, the thing that I, the Herald of Andraste, asked him really nicely to do," Qamar drawled, arms crossed from across the training ground where he had been having quite a pleasant conversation with Commander Rutherford about the difference in organization between mercenary troupes and large scale military forces. "What's more, does anyone remember me asking the templar to teach the mage how to cast magic? No? Well, shit."

The same Commander Rutherford who looked like someone had just slapped him across the face with a fish. "Enough, Ser Ruvena! What in Andraste's name do you think you are doing?"

Ser straightened, wrenching Jane to her feet. "Commander Rutherford. I am fulfilling my duties as a templar, ser."

Solas's eyebrows rose. "I was not aware that a mage’s education included corporal punishment. My apologies. The oversight will not occur again."

Qamar smiled, charming as a viper and twice as deadly. “Commander, would you say this is the kind of care I can expect for my ward?"

Cullen's jaw tightened even as Ser's grip did on Jane's arm. "No. I most certainly would not. Ser Ruvena! Release Serah Smythe at once!"

"Commander!" The woman paled, turning as white as the snow Jane had so suddenly lost. "You cannot be serious. You know better than any of us that this is how it must be!"

Varric whistled low and sharp, drawn from his tent across Haven to the source of all the commotion. "Well, shit. That was a mistake." The throng of gawkers and bystanders murmured, and there was no stopping what was about to happen.

Jane did her best impression of a drowning fish. She gasped as another purge rippled through her body, cutting the fog that bubbled at her lips off before she could even start. Ser stepped back and hauled Jane along with her. "You cannot be serious!" She licked at her lips nervously as she stuttered. "A mage must be contained for all of our sakes! Lest there be an abomination in our midst and demons at our throats!"

Qamar had enough. It took the breath of a moment for him to approach the hapless new Inquisition recruit. Their Commander had deemed this poor greenhorn entirely hapless and more likely to hurt himself before he did anyone else, and so the more experienced former templar had handed him a spear and told him to learn how to stick a straw dummy with it. "Let me see that for a moment, lad." So used to following orders by then, the recruit only nodded and handed the spear over with his mouth open wide enough to catch flies.

"Last chance."

"By the Maker, you have all taken leave-"

Whatever Ser had wanted to say was cut off by the sound of her own blood gurgling through her lungs and turning to froth on her lips. Adaar had simply rolled his shoulders, spun the spear in one meaty hand to test its heft, and then reared back. Every vein in his neck had stood out in one sharp moment as he held the spear in one hand and thrust his other out to guide the path of the weapon as it arced through the air.

Ser let Jane go because she was too busy grasping at the wooden shaft that pierced through one side of her armor and out the other, the iron tip digging into the frozen dirt before the force of Qamar's impromptu javelin pinned her to the ground like a beetle to a card.

"Would anyone _else_ like to assume they know what's best for the Herald of Andraste's ward? Anyone?" Qamar turned to face the masses with thunder on his face and a snarl on his lips. "I can do this all day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We stan Adaar very hard here.


	8. Avoiding Unrighteousness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warning labels here!
> 
> We're free and clear of bad things! Ayyyyy!!!
> 
> "The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”  
> ― Plato

No one let Jane watch what happened next. She remembered everything moving in slow motion, the edges of the world fading in and out of technicolor wonder and fish-eyed monochrome. There was blood on her face, warm and wet as it ran down to pool along her clavicle. She could hear the crowd roar when Ser gurgled her every breath, and Jane shook from the force of her knees slamming into the frozen ground.

She wanted to scream.

She _needed_ to scream.

But the cold wouldn't come, slipped through her grasp over and over again. The shards of the spell Solas had built around her still floated around the corners of her eyes. And she _pulled_ and _pushed_ until something went sharp and hollow in her heart, the blood in her veins golden lava that burned.

Someone screamed, but Jane couldn't be sure who. Her talons dug into the sides of her face, scratching at the bruises of her eyes until someone grabbed at her wrist and pulled it away. There was more shouting, something burning against her skin. She couldn't breathe and the world was too small, tilting on its axis while the moons passed overhead.

Her body shook, and she raised a single bloody hand in front of her face.

Oh.

Ser breathed through the hole between her lungs, the air whistling wet and wrong out of her blood filled mouth.

_Shhh, Jane._

_I'm still here._

_Go sleep for now._

_I'll be here._

She woke to the same wall she had for weeks. Curled up on her side so her wings could hang from the edge of the cot and not be trapped under the weight of her own body, but somehow warmer than she had become used to. Her head wasn't pillowed on her arm. Instead, she breathed in something that smelled like fresh-cut hay right beneath her nose, covered in fresh linen and warmed by the high noon sun. She sat up and a blanket fell off her shoulder, puddling into her lap. The first of two blankets, new and cleaner than her old and suspiciously missing blanket, in fact.

There were sheets beneath her and a hay stuffed mattress under even all those. It was like a switch had been flipped in how the room was set up. In the corner, someone had placed a little table with a pitcher and a bowl. Across the way, there was a little screen set up for privacy in the corner that Jane had been told to shove her bucket. There was even a little rug in front of the door to keep her feet off the cold floor.

Startled, she sat up so fast that her toe talons had barely touched the ground before she even thought about it. "What... happened?" Her wings opened and shut, stretched out the kinks from her unexpected nap. She was late for her lessons and, judging by the square of light on the wall, very much late for the next morning's devotionals.

No longer did it look like a prison cell, but instead a room where someone could at least rest.

"Hmm. How does this fare to you, my child?" The voice, cultured and vaguely French, was familiar enough that Jane didn't give herself whiplash at the sound. "The Herald requested that the Inquisition make his ward feel more at ease."

Mother Giselle put the embroidery hoop down in her lap, tucking the needle into a blank space in the bright fabric. "Tell me. What would you have us do in recompense?"

Jane blinked slowly in her confusion. "I... don't understand, Revered Mother."

Mother Giselle gave her a gentle smile. "Child. You were brought to us with the expectation of safety, education, and purpose. None of which we have given you."

"I... deserved it." She did her best to keep the cot turned halfway into a respectable bed between her body and the Mother. Odd, because she definitely didn't have a little desk and chair in the room before, or the little stack of books and paper on top of it.

The Mother looked right at home as she hummed under her breath. "Now what gave you that impression? We are all the Maker's children here."

"But," Jane swallowed back the little bubble of terror that threatened to leak out of her mouth despite the calming runes in the floorboards. "I'm a mage. An... abomination."

"Perhaps. Or, perhaps it is our expectations that make monsters out of the gentlest of souls. But that does not matter. What matters is what you wish to do from here." She placed the hoop on the desk before she rose to her feet and gave Jane a wane smile. "There are those who wish to see you. And I only hope that we undo what ill we have allowed to happen in our neglect."

She inclined her head gracefully as she left the little room. "Commander." She moved to the side, and Jane's eyes went wide as an owl's in her head.

"Ah. I, uh - Revered Mother." The mass of fur that waited at the door was new and very much out of place. Jane heard the rumble of his voice and all but leaped to snatch the blankets from her new bed, her wings snapping open to propel her forward just a little faster.

She managed to bundle herself up so that only her eyes could be seen, not even her slightly beakish nose visible. Her eyes were still safe. Her eyes were still _human,_ or at least passable enough not to offend. Ser had taught her well. The Commander was a templar, and templars knew what to do with disrespectful mages.

But Jane didn't know how to respect a templar that highly ranked. "Ser! I'm very sorry. I won't... I won't do magic like that again, Ser Knight-Commander. I promise I won't."

That was the wrong thing to say because it made him scowl and the scar on his lip just that much more noticeable. This was a man who could snap her neck in her sleep and the only thing anyone would say was that she deserved it. "That is not my title. We are not templars any longer. We are all part of the Inquisition!"

Jane shrank back from his shout, and he sighed. "I... Maker have mercy. I did not come to shout at you, Jane." He held up his hand and gave the tiniest knock on the wooden doorframe. "May I enter?"

She clutched the blanket around her all the more firmly. "... No, ser."

"Very well." And... he stayed. Not even a hair on his head into the room. Like she wasn't some scrap of a girl from North Carolina and he wasn't the head of an actual army that stomped people into the ground in the name of religious fervor. "Far be it for me to intrude in a lady's domain."

Jane stepped back until her wings brushed against the wall and smeared the charcoal. Pity, but she could always try to draw it again later. "I'm not a lady, Ser Commander."

He chuckled, his hands still held right where she could see them. "Cullen. I would prefer it if you called me Cullen."

_Liar, liar._

_He's lying to you._

_Are you really this stupid?_

_"Liar."_ She clapped a hand over her mouth in fear, the blanket drifting open so he could see more of her body than she wanted him to. Mages shouldn't be temptations, should be seen and heard even less than the furniture.

He shifted, the folds of his mantle rustling just enough for her to know he moved. "Would you prefer I swore an oath? Very well-"

"Don't!" One step forward in her terror and oh no this couldn't be happening. The rules of this place were clear, and Jane didn't want to be punished again by someone worse than Ser. "Templars don't swear to mages."

He placed his hand over his heart, bowing just enough at the waist that his hair could have brushed the invisible barrier that separated what he called a lady's domain from the Chantry proper. "I, Cullen Stanton Rutherford, swear to Jeanmarie Smythe to speak the truth at all times and forever keep my word." He flashed her only the tiniest of smirks. "Cullen, if it would please the lady."

Jane's mother would have told her to close her mouth before a fly buzzed in. "Bless your heart."

Cullen straightened with more grace than a man in full plate mail should have. "As you will."

No, Jane did not wish. Jane did not wish to be this close to someone who had so clearly lost his mind. "No thank you, Commander." Maybe if she just ignored the obvious trap, he would get bored of trying to bait the mage. Ser had liked that game, about as much as Caroline's catty friends had. This was a game Jane was not going to lose. "What's going to happen to me now, Commander?"

"Is it so difficult to believe I mean no harm?" He sighed once more before he slipped into the comfortable weight of his position. "What will only happen will be what should have been. You will be protected as a valuable member of the Inquisition. What you will is all that shall occur. Nothing else. I promise."

_Liar._

_He's such a bad liar._

"I want..." She looked everywhere but at the door, tears in her eyes because this man had to be so cruel and give her a shining shred of hope wrapped in the rot of lies. "I want to leave. I want to go home now, please."

The Commander cleared his throat and awkwardly scratched at the back of his head. "That... isn't going to be possible." There. Caroline was right. He was a bad liar and Jane wasn't going to fall for his tricks. "Outside of Haven's walls, mages and templars are at war. When it is safe to do so, I will personally see you home to your family."

What. "Liar." Jane wasn't very big, but she could puff herself up rather well now. "You're a liar." Out and out her wings snapped until the blanket slid to the ground in a sad little pile. "You're just like Ser! I'm not going to break the rules, so you can stop lying to me. I know what happens to mages who try to run."

_Liiiiiiar._

_He wants to hurt you._

_Don't give him a reason._

"Jane, I-" He started to talk, but she stepped forward and hissed. Every feather on her body puffed up. She hadn't known she could make that sound, and neither had he.

"Go away!" Jane didn't know what else to do, so she scooped the one pillow off her cot and threw it right in his face. "Go. Away!" Jane knew how to scream now, how to flatten her tongue and lean forward just enough to wail and wail at a pitch she hadn't been able to reach before. This time, this time she wouldn't go quietly. She'd make him work for it. The little bit of cold in her and Caroline behind her would make him pay for every bruise.

He let the pillow smack him square in the face. And he caught it before it hit the floor, gently bending to place it down just inside her space without ever crossing that line. And he closed the door to her room with a bow. "As you will."

He didn't latch or lock the door behind him.

Jane figured out that Cullen hadn't locked the door because the door squeaked open a little farther every time someone opened the massive chantry doors. She huddled in the corner of her room, out of the direct line of sight as much as she could, with the pillow clutched to her chest.

She had thrown something at a templar.

And not just any templar. Oh no. Cullen Stanton Rutherford was the templar that made all the other templars swoon, Ser included. He was the paragon of following orders and making the right call in all the worst moments. And he had sworn to her in some weird knightly ritual, told her to call him by his name, sworn to see her safe and home. What had she done to deserve even a shred of his attention? She was just Jane. Plain old Jane who had only left her hometown to go to college in the capital, then came right back to help take care of her parents. She wasn't _interesting_ like Caroline.

Besides. Templars hated mages. Hated abominations even more. And here was Jane, halfway to a crow tit that made snowflakes out of nothing. If there was ever a being that the Commander should want to stay away from, it was Jane.

The stomp of armored feet outside her door had ever wings flapping up and out as if she could fly away from the whole affair. Jane didn't mean to eavesdrop, wasn't the kind of girl who liked to gossip. But it was impossible not to when the chantry was empty of its parishioners and its laysisters were out and about helping the Inquisition with whatever was needed most. Even harder when her door was wide open and people talked right in front of it.

"Did you apologize yet?" There was Qamar like she had never heard him before. He sounded mad, disappointed like only parents could be, and as if he was two seconds away from taking justice into his own hands. Again. Jane shivered at the thought, bile in the back of her throat as she shoved memory back into a box.

The long sigh from whoever Qamar was upset with echoed through the hall. "Attempting at least. I am sorry to say that it is more... ah." Poor Commander. He sounded tired and as if he was on his last leg. He gave a rueful laugh. "You'll be glad to know her aim is true at least."

Jane blinked slowly, crept around the cot on her hands and knees, and did her best to peek out of the crack in the door without opening it any farther. There was Qamar, of course, arms folded over his chest as he literally glared through the open door that all the really important people seemed to always enter. Which was strange, because the door was always closed tight when Ser took her out for the day.

Qamar's foot tapped against the stone, the metal on his boots ringing impossibly loudly in the silence. "That isn't what I asked you to do, Commander."

"Forgive me, Herald. It has been quite some time since I've..."

"Had to ask a girl if you could take her on walks? If she wants to forgive you for letting you lock her in a tiny prison cell? Ask if she enjoyed having a monster of a woman beat her for breathing?" Qamar gave a cold laugh. "Man up, Rutherford. Leliana was very thorough with that briefing. You know damn well what you let happen to one of mine."

"Maker's breath - must you?" Two grown men shouting at each other was terrifying, and Jane double-checked to make sure neither could see. "I have every intention of doing right by her. But it serves no one if I push the lady where she clearly does not want to go!" Something in the room hit the floor, and Jane peeked around the room to see Qamar's jaw clench again.

"What would you have of me, Adaar? To make her every waking moment a living nightmare? She believes us all templars, and all templars must be like Ruvena." Something else slammed on wood, and the shouting continued. "I took from her choice and agency out of a mistaken belief that she was the worst kind of creature. I would endeavor to give it back and undo what damage I have done. But only when the _lady herself_ decides."

Qamar barked out a laugh. "I'll bet you'll get right on that, lad." Jane watched the large man lean down so that his horns just barely brushed the top of the doorframe. Whatever he said before he turned on his heel to leave was too low for Jane to hear, and she scuttled back on the tips of her fingers and knees to slide across the floor where he couldn't see her.

Jane sat for a long time after Qamar left, her chin pillowed on her knees. She sat so long that her backside went numb and her toes cold, eyes drifted shut as she did her best to think it through. Qamar did it. He really did it. And he said the Commander was _responsible_ for what had happened to her. The same Commander that apparently wanted to apologize to her so badly that he gave her permission to be familiar with him. Which meant that none of it was supposed to happen.

Let it not be said that southern girls lacked courage. Not quite as impressive as lipstick kisses against love letters Caroline made her send or holding a Goodwill boombox high so that William could serenade someone that wasn't her. But she was determined all the same.

She didn't put a blanket over herself to hide behind. No wimple on her head or robe to cover her feathers. Her wings appreciated it, fluttering behind her like a cape fit for a proper noble lady. Jane did appreciate how the door didn't squeak on its hinges as she pressed her palm against it and slowly pushed it open. Quiet as a mouse, she crept across the cold Chantry floor until she reached the open door.

He hunched over the table with piles of paperwork surrounding him like an accountant's nightmare. The chair he sat on was dwarfed by the wide set of his shoulders and the fur that adorned them, but the haggard darkness under his eyes spoke of a deeper problem than the mistake that had cost her so much.

Jane felt the chill in the pit of her stomach and she gulped. She could do this. Her knuckles rapped gently against the door frame, and his head whipped up at the interruption. "Excuse me, Commander?"

"Jane." He cleared his throat of his surprise to see her and very carefully stilled in place. She could see it now. Slow and careful like he didn't want to spook her, the same way that Dennet had taught her to approach a skittish horse. "I'm glad to see you're feeling better."

"You said as I will." She swallowed the lump in her throat again. "What does that mean?"

Whatever she asked, Cullen had not expected it to be that. "So long as you desire it and it is within my power and reason, then I shall arrange it." He looked her in the eyes while he spoke, not showing even a single shred of discomfort. "Was there anything you wanted?"

She stayed just on the outside of the room with her wings rustling with her discomfort. If he could respect her space then she could respect his. "Can I go take care of the horses now?"

"If that is what my lady wills, then yes." He was matter-of-fact about the whole affair, and it was surprisingly reassuring. "Give me but a moment and I will escort you."

Jane's eyes went wide and her fingers covered her mouth to stifle her shock. The Commander gave a small chuckle at her face. "Why," came her tiny chirp of a question. Was she under guard again? Was she about to be handed off to some other templar at the door? What monster would watch her every move now?

"If I couldn't escort a single lady to a horse paddock, I would be a poor knight indeed."

What did he just say? The sound that came out of Jane's throat could only graciously be called a croak. "You?"

Cullen's eyebrow arched rather primly and he grinned at her, making Jane's cheeks burn from embarrassment. "I believe that is what personally escorting implies, yes."

She couldn't stop her wings from flapping open even if there was a knife pressed to her throat. Nor could she stop her panicked stammering squeaks. "I mean... you don't have to? You have... important commander things to do. I can go by myself."

"Hmm... I think not. A lady unaccompanied in Haven? Josephine would have my head." Now Jane knew he was messing with her, every dip of the quill into the little ink pot a hasty scratch that looked far too much like a grown man trying to get through the last few hours worth of work in as little time as possible.

"I'm not a lady, Commander."

"As you will, my lady." He didn't stop to sprinkle sand on the letters like Thurston told her was necessary to keep the ink from feathering. Instead, Cullen stacked the pages on top of each other and all but shoved them into a little box. He had to reach over his makeshift desk to toss one particular bundle tied up with a strip of ribbon that made Jane gasp. "These arrived for you this morning."

One little bundle of letters tied together with a sprig of dried lavender, the parchment thick and the writing an ungodly mess of notes with scribbled pictures on the sides.

"I'm given to understand that Master Dennet has graciously allowed us your knowledge and time." Cullen slid into his role so smoothly that Jane forgot who he was for a moment. He strode around the overly large table with its map like he owned the room, talking all the while. "I would appreciate regular reports on the condition of the mounts Master Dennet has sent ahead." And all Jane could do was nod when he reached the door.

He gave a slight courteous bow and waved her away from the door with one hand. "My lady. Shall we?"

Cullen did not offer her his arm as they walked like every shining knight on television had prepared her for. He did, however, open every door on the way and hold his arm out to offer her support when her toes wouldn't spread out enough to keep her upright on the worst of the icy spots. He didn't say a word when she stumbled, simply stuck his arm out to catch her gently around her elbows and lifted just enough as he stepped to carry her over the icy patch.

When the crowd began to murmur and her heart pounded, he tapped the inside of her elbow with one gloved finger and cleared his throat. "My lady, have you been fully apprised of your duties?"

"I have... duties?" That was news to Jane.

Cullen frowned. "I was informed that you were sent ahead as part of Dennet's agreement with Adaar."

Jane's head tilted and she chirped in her confusion. "Yes?" She lifted one wing, rather proud of herself for managing one at a time, in an unspoken argument. "But then there was this?"

"Yes, that." Cullen pointed at the bundle of papers in Jane's hands. "Master Dennet sent ahead instructions and details on the mounts he managed to acquire for us." He cleared his throat. "It was not the intention to waylay you."

_Oh, poor Jane._

_The rats showed their true colors._

_Don't forget what they did._

_I won't._

Jane smelled the horses before she saw them, and she could almost feel Cullen tense. "It's ok. It happens." She gave him the flash of a smile and he stopped in place. "Caroline did stuff like that a lot too."

"That will not be allowed to happen again, my lady."

Jane bent down to slide right under the fence. "Ok." She gave a tiny snort through her little beaky nose. "I'll be fine here, Commander." The horse paddock was clearly put together in a hurry and the milling herd seemed to split at Jane's approach. Three familiar horses, one particular cart horse at the lead, seemed to be far too excited to run across the frozen pasture. Apple seemed to want nothing more than to dribble saliva and half-chewed bits of hay onto Jane's hair, and the young woman was more than delighted to scratch her chin in turn.

Cullen coughed into his fist and looked away from the gravity-defying section of hair that Apple licked higher and higher. "I look forward to your report this evening. I'll leave you to it then."

Her arms were full of horseflesh, her taloned fingers stroking and scratching at noses as the equines so clearly desired. "Hmm... you're not as shiny now, Apple." Jane ducked under one last lick just in time to see Cullen turn and take some clipboard thing from a frantic looking man in a cowl and the Inquisition's standard green uniform.

To each their own then, and Jane ignored whatever conversation about requisitions and recruits not know which end of the sword to stick into their opponent (probably the pointy end, but Jane could be wrong) in favor of running her fingers over the horses just like Dennet had taught her. "Well, come on then. Let's get to work."


	9. A Gentleman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Destress guys. We're in destress time. Deep breathes. No bad triggers or warning labels here. Little bit of drama. Some fluff to keep you warm in these trying times.
> 
> “A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.”  
> ― Haruki Murakami

It tasted like blood on her tongue, trickled down her throat, and made her cough up thick droplets that dribbled down her chin. The woman had sworn that the potion would work swiftly and she had been true to her word. Faintly glowing drops remained in the bottom of the thick and dusty glass bottle the supposed horse healer had pressed into her hands, and Jane could feel the bruise around her eye throbbing just a little bit less. The crunch and grind around her eye as her vision cleared was something she could have done without, but Jane supposed that meant whatever was in the bottle was working.

If it worked for a horse, it could work on a qunari. And if it could work on a qunari, it would probably work on whatever Jane was. At least that was the logic the old woman had when she pressed the thing into Jane's palms and told her to drink it.

Jane had even managed to get a weird notebook from the old woman, and a little stick of charcoal wrapped in string to write with. The woman had even come back later with a meat pastry Jane had wolfed down in her hunger.

Thurston would be disappointed that Jane began doing inventory and assessments of each horse in an alphabet she at least understood. Her handwriting was no longer the clear artistic wonder it had been, not when she had inch long talons attached to each finger. They weren't as bad as the stiletto claws Caroline liked to have done at the nail salon, but Jane had only ever stuck to basic manicures and boring clear polish.

Each horse had its own stable, and each stable had a number painted on a little wooden plaque that could be hung and removed from each stall when the horse was no longer there. It wasn't the most exciting thing, but at least Jane figured out how many horses Dennet had managed to acquire and what condition they were in.

The strawberry roan that Jane had ridden into Haven on had been left in the general horse paddock until such time as her owner could come back and retrieve her. Until then, Jane was personally responsible for her care. She didn't really mind, not as she brushed the horse down and mucked out the stall. The horse was a sweetheart and on loan, after all. Jane's mother hadn't raised her to be ungrateful and treat other people's property poorly.

By the time the sun was on its way down, Jane had a full inventory of horses, their tack that was sometimes entirely lacking, and a rather solid idea of which stablehand could be trusted around the really big war-horses and which should only be allowed to touch carthorses. She had taken a break to wash her hair in a bucket of freezing water pulled from the well and a handful of white powder that Elaina had once sworn would clean every ill in the world and smelled somewhat like baking soda. She couldn't braid her hair back up again, choosing instead to comb it out with her fingers and squeeze out as much water as she could with her palms.

She spent her time in the overly warm stable with the war-horses anyway. 

Jane was particularly fond of the war-horses. They were massive animals that nosed at her hair and sniffed at her ear feathers but meant no harm. Jane was too small for them to worry about doing anything more than running over. And they cared very much about not running her over. Their tack were individual pieces of beauty, shining metal stamped with crests and patterns that repeated in the tooled leather of straps and buckles. These were as good as a knight's calling card, and these were the horses that Dennet sent her to manage.

There were templars and knights alike, chevaliers and nobles, soldiers of merit, and Jane was singlehandedly responsible for keeping the cavalry's mounts well exercised and cared for while their riders were in Haven. She was also, as Jane managed to get someone to read her from the letters Dennet had sent her, expected to assist with expanding the Inquisition's cavalry forces.

Jane had no idea how to manage that.

The knock on the stable door had Jane squeaking, a whisp of ice puffing out from between her teeth.

"Am I interrupting?" Jane did not expect to see Cullen, lantern in hand, waiting for her to finish her lap of the stables.

She rubbed her eyes, feathers smudging bits of charcoal across her face, and yawned as she snapped her book shut. "No. I just finished."

Cullen nodded and turned to the side with what Jane was beginning to come to realize was a polite form of order for her to get moving. "Then I recall requesting a report, my lady."

Jane tilted her head as one of the more curious war-horses snuffled at her hair. She batted gently at its nose, pushing back with just the pads of her fingers and the tips of her claws. "No, sir. We don't eat Janes. I'll bring you an apple in the morning."

Cullen cleared his throat, and Jane looked back to see him trying very carefully not to laugh at her struggle with the horse. "Do you need help, Jane?"

She stuck her tongue out at him, then gasped in horror at what she had done, clapping her hand over her mouth while he chuckled at her. Her cheeks were on fire as she stepped away from the horse and out of the barn door.

It was strange to Jane that people here seemed to wear so many layers. Sure, there was snow on the ground and frozen patches in spots. But it was warm enough that eventually those spots would melt and there would be slush on the ground. So when Cullen held up his hand for her to stop before she left the barn and hopped out into the snow, Jane could only look at him in confusion.

"My lady, do you not have a cloak?"

Jane gave a tiny little snort that her mother would have called deeply unladylike. "Why? It's not that cold."

"It's colder at night this high in the mountains. Here, take this for now." He set the lantern down and reached for what Jane assumed was the clasp to the furred cape he wore at all times.

Her wings snapped up, flapped once then twice until he looked up from trying to strip a layer off in front of a barn, and Jane pointed backward. "I'm warmer than you are." She didn't think about it and took his gloved hand away from his cape, placing it on the thickest part of the feathers on her collarbone. "See?"

Cullen stopped moving the minute his gloved fingers touched her thin skin. "Ah. I... uh... I see." His eyes went carefully to the barn's ceiling, and he cleared his throat. Gently he tugged his hand free and stepped back, careful not to bend even a single feather. "I stand corrected. You are... quite warm enough." He cleared his throat once more and did his level best to look at everything but Jane for a moment. He bent enough to pick the lantern back up, and Jane covered her yawn with her palm.

Her wings snapped out once and twice again before they settled behind her shoulders. Jane didn't quite understand how they worked, or what Solas meant when he kept saying she was some kind of new creature. But she did know with a bone-deep certainty was that whatever she had done to herself had almost finished. Everything but her wings had settled within the first few days of whatever Solas had done to her. But what were once little things the length of her forearm had gotten large enough to touch her hips when they folded and caused a rather impressive draft when she snapped them open.

Once, she had opened her wings in panic and knocked a whole stack of books over along with the chair Thurston had placed them on. They were becoming a bit of a nuisance the bigger they became, but at least they kept her warm.

Jane's toes spread out as they headed back to the Chantry. This time, Cullen did the same as last. He didn't offer her his arm but kept the lantern outstretched between them so that both of them could see where they were going on their way from the barn to the Haven Chantry proper. Neither of them said anything, content to walk together in the dark in companionable silence.

Cullen shook the snow from his cape before he opened the Chantry door for Jane, waiting for her to enter before he blew the little flame out. He led the way to the room in the back with the large table and its map, a hasty desk shoved in the corner where his paperwork stacks had been moved. "Now, what did you make of it?"

Jane sneezed from the waft of incense that wafted into the room, and Cullen frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"The state of the horses, my lady. Such as they are." He closed the door partially behind her before he indicated the one and only chair in the room for her to sit on.

There was something soothing about how careful he was with her, and Jane gave him a rueful smile before wiggling her wings at him. The chair's back was rather high, probably to accommodate a man of Cullen's stature, and would be the opposite of comfortable for her to make her report in. Instead, she gave a little glance to the large table, nodded once, and then hopped up on the table's edge to perch quite neatly with her legs dangling. "Dennet won't like it. You're missing half of what's important tack wise, and anyone who could care for half the horses died at the Conclave. Apparently all the... Chevalier? Yes. You've got two chevaliers left and ten of their war-horses in the barn."

Cullen dropped into his chair with a grunt, snatching up a piece of parchment and his quill. "Worse than I hoped then."

Jane gave a tiny shrug, careful not to move her wings and disturb the little pieces. "Most of the horses you have left, Dennet will tell you to put out of their misery and make glue out of them." It was true. As much as it hurt her to say, a good chunk of the horses that Jane had been taken to see had been maimed or rendered lame in the wake of the Conclave. Whatever the Conclave was, it had been major and awful enough to destroy the last barn they had hastily constructed, taking a large number of horses with it.

Cullen's quill stalled on the parchment. "How many left?"

Jane pulled her little notebook out of her skirt pocket, a blessed thing tied around her waist and under the top skirt that held all manner of useful things. She settled it on her knees and licked her fingers before she flipped it open to the right page. "The ones Dennet sent already have started replacing the glue horses."

He held his hand out for her notebook, and she passed it over without a blink. Jane might not have been the smartest, but she at least remembered how to take Cornell notes and put that knowledge to excellent use. Or, what she thought was excellent use until Cullen looked at the page and sighed. "Jane. Do you know how to write in Trade?"

She tilted her head. "I'm sorry. I was supposed to be learning."

Cullen pinched his nose and flipped her notebook in multiple directions as he tried to make sense of the letters. "I mean no offense, my lady, but I can't read Magister." He passed her back her notebook and dipped his pen in his inkwell. "From the top then, Jane."

The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon in false dawn when Cullen finally let her stop pretending that she could begin to account for the dismal state of what he had hoped would be at least a quarter of a functioning cavalry. Jane simply didn't understand the questions that he asked, but she had no qualms with reading him the long list of things she had been told to take stock of. Sometimes she was too quiet and he needed to ask her to repeat herself, but as long as she kept thinking of it like a verbal book report she would be fine. She had long since given up hope of pretending she wasn't tired and Cullen had become the strictest teacher she had ever had.

Her head nodded and she shook herself awake, the book in her hands sliding down to the floor in the hollow thump of paper. Jane almost fell from her perch on the table's edge, and would have, if Cullen hadn't made her sit on the floor after the first time she had dozed off. Instead, she suffered from the ignoble position of having a grown man try not to laugh when she finally noticed that she slumped over on his leg and all but drooled all over his pants.

Jane's ears flattened against the sides of her skull and she gave a low gasping chirp instead of a yawn. Her wings rustled against the warm weight around her shoulders and she blinked her eyes blearily up at the sight of Cullen still filling out paperwork, his quill scratching across an almost infinite amount of paperwork.

It was very clear that this was not where Cullen normally did his work, not with the way he had pulled the desk further away in consideration of her wings and no marks remained on the floor from age. The table, conversely in its pride of place in the center of the room, had left long scores and sun-faded spots across the floor where it had been dragged over time. Cullen's desk and ever infinite piles of paperwork, on the other hand, did not belong in this room. Neither did Jane. But for the first time in a long time, she slept without crying, the warmth of another person reminding her that she was still (despite whatever Solas said and condescendingly implied) human.

Someone had brought her a blanket. Jane let it fall from her shoulders and frowned. She knew this blanket with all of its threadbare spots, bits of it irreparably stained from her own blood. Someone had gone to grab it from what was apparently her room. Someone that wasn't Cullen, because that would have required him to stop filling out paperwork for the minuscule amount of time that Jane had nodded off. But someone had grabbed it for her.

That someone, as it turned out, had been waiting for her to wake up with the most patient smile on his face. Qamar was a quiet man, preternaturally so when one accounted for his massive bulk and tendency to run through problems like a wrecking ball through drywall. He was a scheduled demolition contained in plate mail, and Jane was always sure where she stood with him.

Qamar had been muttering to Cullen, taking piles of parchment and looking over them with a frown. "Lad, we won't last the winter at this rate. You're sure?"

"I checked with the quartermaster myself. We're recruiting too fast with not enough resources." Cullen murmured right back, the low timbre of his voice lulling Jane almost back to sleep. "If you can't get us more support, we'll starve before we even close the Breach." His quill never stopped scratching across more reports, and he slid a single page across his impromptu desk to Qamar. "If you can get that, we might stand a chance."

The horned man grunted, his fingers dwarfing the page as he skimmed over it. "That wonderful redhead of yours wants me to make friends with some mercenary company. Won't tell me the name, but apparently, they've got a lad making himself known."

Cullen gave a wry grin. "Sister Leliana is as much mine as she is yours. It's likely she only allows us the privilege of believing we have a say in anything."

Jane's wings rustled and Qamar looked down at her. "Should sleep a little longer, lass. We're about to work you like a dog and worse. Cullen, what have you got on the lad?"

The Commander cleared his throat. "His name is Cremisius Aclassi-"

"Now you're just fucking with me. Cremisius Aclassi of Bull's Chargers? Follows a one-eyed qunari called The Iron Bull? Horns up?" Qamar threw his head back and laughed. "Well, I'll be damned. Bastard survived after all."

Jane did her best to make it look like hiding behind Cullen's leg was entirely normal, sliding slowly away from Qamar's deep cackle. Cullen, for his part, simply pretended it wasn't happening.

"I take it you're acquainted," Cullen drawled.

Qamar wiped an imaginary tear out of his eye and stroked his beard while he chortled. "You could say that. Tried to kill him, he tried to kill me. Made eyes at my wife once. Good times. What in the void is _Cremisius Aclassi_ doing in this frozen backwater? Wait. Don't tell me. I'll let it be a surprise."

"You're married?" Cullen couldn't hide his confused amusement.

"I was. Her name was Mirena. My beautiful Mirena. And there's not a force in this world that could make that woman move, least of all me." Jane could all but hear the unspoken tragedy in Qamar's voice, the way his lip quivered beneath his mustache as he said her name. "You remember my Mirena, lad. She was the one who signed that damn contract with your Divine in the first place." But there was anger there, that quiet thing that had simmered under his skin when he saw Ser for the last time. "I had a daughter too. A whole company of family and people I loved who stood between you and that damn Breach. I'll not forget that, Rutherford."

Jane was not going to sleep for a long time, not when Qamar clenched his jaw like that and clenched the parchment in his hand. Cullen's hand drifted towards his sword, angling a part of his body to hide Jane's. She gulped, wings rustling in preparation for something she didn't have words to explain.

"Your family will not be forgotten. They shall be remembered with all the souls we've lost." Cullen shifted, slow and careful so as not to draw attention to it. "Jane. We will discuss this matter further in the afternoon." Unspoken was his quiet plea for her to leave before either Qamar or Cullen had to do something horribly violent that would frighten her into snowflakes and winter winds.

But it was enough for her to slap her taloned fingers against the stone, palms pushing off the stone like a runner at the starting line to the worst sort of marathon, and all but fled out of the room, a lick of frost curling from the corner of her mouth. Her feet weren't designed for running anymore, but her toes splayed out across the cold floor until she burst out of the heavy wooden doors.

Any drowsiness she had felt vanished in the face of a terrible thought: Qamar wanted to kill Cullen.

He was probably going to succeed.

Jane wasn't the brightest, but she understood that much.

Qamar wanted every single member of the Inquisition's upper management that had been responsible for his family's death. He didn't blame the rest of them for the Breach and that was probably why he was bothering to keep them alive, but when the Breach was sealed and his role in this was done... Qamar was going to run Cullen through just like he had Ser. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.

She wanted to scream, but screaming would ruin her ability to keep running. Well, if it could be called running at all. Her running had become more of a waddle with a leap at the end. And the leap had become higher than she had ever managed before.

Jane's wings snapped out on instinct, slowly flapping until she managed to pick up the rhythm. When her foot left the ground, down came her wings on the beat. She would never truly fly with wings this comparatively small, but she could get a respectable amount of lift off the ground. And, if she could figure out the timing, she could flap at least twice and glide down the path.

"What in the void - where's the fire, Gardenia?" The sound of Varric's voice was a balm on her soul that Jane didn't know she needed, and she somehow managed to angle her wings so that she would glide to the ground near him.

Jane did not stick the landing. Instead, she slid on her feet and back flapped hard enough to throw herself off balance and land painfully on her back. Her little scream of pain mingled with the sound of air whooshing out of her lungs, and Jane had to scrabble at the air for a moment while she remembered how physics worked.

Varric hauled her upright with one arm, his other already reaching for his ever-present crossbow. "Come on Gardenia. You gotta use your words, kid." He was kind enough to let her hang from his arm and catch her breath, but Varric very much did not appear to enjoy being woken up for Jane's panic.

"He's going to _kill him_."

Varric's went wide and he clicked his tongue in frustration. "Well, shit. Lead the way."

Jane managed one terrified gasp before she turned on her toes and ran back to the chantry. Her ungainly gait was just slow enough for Varric to keep up, and he loaded his crossbow on the way. She smashed the doors open with her shoulder so that Varric could slip under her outstretched arm.

Someone had to stop Qamar from strangling Cullen and Varric was levelheaded enough to do it. Better someone who was good with his words and wouldn't make the violence worse, someone with a joke to diffuse the tension and keep the two from ending the Inquisition before it even got off the ground.

"Where?"

Jane could only point to the backroom, its door wide open and silent as a grave. _"Help,"_ she panted around the ice coating the back of her tongue.

_We could stop them._

_You know how, Jane._

_Just take a deep breath._

Jane shook her head to clear the echoes of a ghost that wouldn't let her be. "No, Caroline." She wasn't made of the kind of nails to the face and hair pulling anger that Caroline had. Jane couldn't do that, had never been able to even pretend that she had a mean bone in her body.

Varric all but slid across the floor in his attempt to reach the War Room and Jane scampered right behind him. She peeked over his shoulder into the room and chirped her confusion at the scene before her.

"Maker's breath! Varric, have you lost all sense?" Cullen looked up from his paperwork, not a hair out of place and about as ruffled as a stone.

Qamar leaned against the table with Jane's notebook in his massive hands, turned sideways as he squinted at her chicken-scratch handwriting. "Huh. I think I figured this out. Hey, Rutherford. This part means _go fuck yourself_." Cullen pinched at his nose like he had the worst kind of migraine, and Qamar gave him a bloodthirsty grin. "When it's done, chantry boy. It's you and me, and you're paying that debt."

The man in question merely nodded gravely. "When it's done then."

Varric whistled. "Gardenia, did you bring me here to watch two grown men swear they'll try to murder each other someday? Not exactly dying here." He settled Bianca against his shoulder and looked back up at her. "Could have waited for daylight."

Qamar huffed behind his mustache, his beard fluffing as he harrumphed. "If you've got the time to be running across Haven, then you've got time for other things. Come on, lass. You've got some magic to learn before we let you roam around and give Cully-Wully here all the heebie-jeebies about having an abomination running around his precious little chantry."

"Flying. She was flying around Haven. Landing... that still needs a bit of work." Varric clapped his hand on Jane's shoulder and laughed. "But glad to know you're not about to kill Curly in cold blood after all."

Cullen snorted. "I would not have been defeated so easily."

Qamar's smile was sharp enough to cut glass. "You could try a lot of things, boy. But we both know how it ends."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEAH.
> 
> WE GOT US A SHIP TAG. Not what you were expecting. But here we are.
> 
> ADAAR'S GOT A WIFE. Her name is Mirena and Qamar is not happy about the circumstance.
> 
> We stan Adaar here.


	10. Methods of Research

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOLAS SUCKS AND THIS IS WHY.
> 
> No horror or nasty warnings here either guys.
> 
> “It was not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of research.”  
> ― H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

Solas was an asshole.

Solas was, arguably, also the smartest person in the entire Inquisition.

That did not stop his track record at teaching Jane magic from being any less of a disaster. One lesson and she ended up in a prison cell built for mages in the care of the templar Ser Ruvena. Her second lesson ended with that same templar being removed from existence by the judge, jury, and executioner Qamar Adaar.

Whatever mysteries the third lesson would bring was not something that Jane wanted to have any part of.

Solas was smart as a whip, but whatever insanity was in his family tree clearly galloped where it should have run.

Jane wanted anything but to attend another so-called lesson with her erstwhile teacher. But Qamar was insistent that he was the best person to teach her how to control her magical powers. In fact, he was the only person who could. So no matter how uncomfortable the bald elf made her feel, she still needed to try to follow his instructions.

The last instructions Solas gave her made no sense. Even Jane knew that what he had done for her second lesson wasn't a lesson for her so much as it was for everyone around her. No mage given into the care of the Inquisition would be stuck in a cage for the sin of being born, not so long as the Herald drew breath. No mage would be beaten down and discarded when they were deemed spent or useless to the cause.

And no one would call Jane an abomination.

Solas called her something new. A kind of being from lands far away that was just as intelligent as a human and as physically different as a qunari. There was nothing to fear from a soft creature like Jane that played with snowflakes and let horses spit down the front of her shirt. She simply looked different and that did not make her an abomination.

Varric's sad story about how Jane was clearly a runaway that had been hidden away from the Chantry by her parents caught on like wildfire in the driest part of a drought. The Inquisition wanted rumors about their Herald of Andraste like most organizations wanted the latest insider gossip about their own management. People were people no matter where you went, and Jane didn't know what to make of it.

Someone on the way to the training grounds, with the Commander himself at her heel, tried calling her the birdgirl and got socked in the arm for it. No one knew what to do with her now, least of all Jane.

Commander Rutherford apparently had some kind of idea on what to do with her. He had walked her to her room after the debacle of the early morning, bid her a pleasant rest, and went on his way. Then he returned after he had run through a myriad of exercises with his troops to pick her up again.

This time, it was the Commander who brought her to her lesson.

Jane bowed her head when Solas examined her from crown to toe. He made a pleased little sound, like a craftsman examining their latest masterpiece and finding it as magnificent as anticipated. Jane had no doubt that if they were in less of a public place, he'd probably ask her to strip down so he could check the full extent of what she had become.

But Varric and Solas's lies worked a little too well.

In the space of two days, Jane had stopped being Plain Jane Marie Smith from Asheville, North Carolina. Now she was Lady Jeanmarie Smythe, formerly of somewhere in lands afar that none of these Fereldan yokels could pronounce. Tragically ripped from her home by the same Rifts that plagued the land, the Herald had reached out his hand and made her his ward out of the compassion that had made him Andraste's herald to begin with.

Lies, according to Varric, were best when closest to the truth.

Qamar had apparently laughed so hard that he snorted beer into his beard. And then he had slapped the table with one massive hand, declared it to be so, and that Leliana was free to add descriptions of how pretty his ward was to her rumor milling so Qamar could have some new whippersnappers to whip into shape.

Leliana had politely declined.

Josephine had not.

The important people had made an entire life for Jane to hide in because they each, in part, believed a core tenet of the lie to be actual fact.

Jane was a run away from a family who had treated her like their worst secret and locked her away for it. And, as Josephine had posited, it was likely that the Caroline that Jane referred to had been Jane's only companionship in captivity. And, if the way Jane cringed and accepted the worst sort of things was her due, Caroline had made it her mission to keep Jane as her personal golden goose. The woman was probably dead, that much they all agreed on, and Jane was mourning her loss poorly.

Muttering to ghosts and asking them what to do and how to make it through each day was not a sign of healthy grieving.

Cullen maintained that Jane, no matter how sad her life was and had become, was still an abomination.

Solas had indignantly replied that abomination implied that she was possessed by a demon. And Jane, whatever else might be wrong with her, was not possessed by a demon. Some spirit or perhaps a true ghost, but as it hadn't hurt her or anyone else it failed the basic criteria for being a demon. The creature hadn't even attempted to strike a deal with her, and Jane bore no signs of blood magic.

Solas, as the only mage of any level of sanity, swore that the being inside of Jane was helping and not hurting and that made it a benefit.

Cullen agreed to personally see to it that she did not murder them all in their sleep.

Whatever magic accident that had turned Jane into some halfway avian woman had been something Solas had smiled about when he was asked. As far as Jane gathered through the stone wall separating the War Room from her cell, Solas said she had tried to become a bird and a person at the same time.

Obviously, that was not physically possible.

But the shreds of the spell that remained had sunk their claws in deep, and Jane's body had simply done what Jane had always done with directions: followed them to the letter. Dangerously so, with effects that Solas could spend the rest of his life examining.

He had no choice but to do what he had done.

A bird and a person did not possess the same parts and systems that made them each survive. So Solas had chosen for her. He had taken the spell and twisted until it snapped, seized what spark of magic that Jane had spare, and decided what form the very essence that comprised every creature great or small would take.

As far as any spell or examination could determine, Jane was no longer human or bird.

Solas was entirely willing to claim credit for the creation of an all-new sentient species, and they should be thanking him for ensuring Jane wouldn't die from feathers growing in her organs or some other such nonsense.

Qamar had quietly informed Solas that if he so much as laid a hand on Jane again without Cullen, Cassandra, or another mage around to determine if there was magic going on, then Qamar would cut that hand off and feed it to him.

Cassandra and Cullen agreed to those terms with prejudice.

Blackwall, who Jane had not yet met but was assured was a good man who would also keep her safe, chimed in that he would personally see Solas to the Deep Roads before he did any of that twisted magic to a child again.

Jane was under strict instructions to scream if Solas did something she didn't understand to or around her.

This did not make her want to attend this lesson any more than before. In fact, it made her want to learn from Solas even less. Because of him, her life here in this place was now about as stable as fairy floss in the rain. Jane would have been content living the rest of her life on that little farm in the care of Dennet and Elaina, but the machinations of the bald elf had destroyed whatever chance she had of returning to that.

Because this was her life now.

No dream was this painful. She had never been given to flights of fancy, especially not with this level of intense detail. Jane shook her head as if that would knock some sense back into her world. And she forced herself to smile, because according to every Smith matriarch you were never fully dressed without one when you went out in public, when Cullen touched her elbow with a frown. "I'm fine."

Jane wasn't fine.

Cullen frowned down at her with a level of concern that made her skin prickle. "Are you well, my lady?" The Commander looked like he honestly cared about what Jane felt.

_He's a liar._

_I taught you better than that, Jane._

Jane blinked slowly and tilted her head, a little chirp whistling through her teeth. Smile and play dumb like what he said made no sense in the face of reality. Jane was fine. Everything was fine and the Commander could move on to worrying about something else. Like, for instance, the fact that he slept at a tiny desk so he could keep a better eye on her.

She wasn't as stupid as Caroline said she was.

_He wants to kill you._

_Just like the rest of them._

Yes. But that wasn't exactly news in Jane's life. She was a single female under the age of 30 in the Bible Belt. Half the people around her could kill or rape her at any given moment. Here, at least, people looked at her like they wanted to help her overcome whatever abysmal struggle that her life had become. People here were kind and that was what mattered.

No Lollipop Guild or shiny ruby slippers would ever be enough to replace the thought that loving the so-called wrong person or following a different political ideology would be enough to get her shot. If there was more melanin than plumage on her skin, she wouldn't be surprised if the police back home treated her like the templars did here.

_He doesn't care about you._

_Not like I do._

_I've always loved you more._

And no matter how much love was in the world, she could still be woken up in the middle of the night by some person with a badge that claimed all sorts of terrible things about her. No matter how much love left, she could still be the one holding her best friend's skirts at her wedding to the one man in her life that had ever treated her with kindness.

Here she had people who stopped the bad things from happening to her.

He's lying.

The Commander of the Inquisition was a busy man, and it was wonderful that he took so much time to help someone who should have been put down in the night like Old Yeller behind the shed.

So she smiled at him, guileless to a fault.

Because nothing was wrong.

Jane was fine.

"Da'len." Solas' voice sent shivers up her spine and she took an involuntary step back. "You are late."

Jane knew what he did to her.

_It's all his fault._

Jane was not fine.

Bite it back, choke it down. A stupid little girl had no place questioning her betters. Don't cry. Don't let them see that they've hurt you because no one cares. Little boys pull pigtails on playgrounds because they like you. Boys can't help themselves and what happens when you wear clothes like some bleach bottle blonde trailer trash hussy.

_No!_

_He knows what he did wrong._

_Why can't you see what he made?_

_Show them all the monster you really are._

Smile politely, look through him and not at him so he can't see your fear. Good little girls shut their damn whore mouths and only speak when spoken to, seen, and not heard. The bruise on her eye hadn't faded, and each slow blink pulled at the tender skin enough to bring tears to the corner of her eyes.

The sound of a stick thumping against the ground had her eyes snapping up from the spot somewhere behind his ankles that Jane had focused on. Solas frowned slightly as he looked upon his first and only student. "It seems that I have been remiss in the content of your lessons."

Jane took a deep breath and steeled herself for what came next.

She was unprepared for the wooden staff thrown at her, and she ducked down with a shriek that frosted the tips of Cullen's gloves as he caught the staff for her. He gave her a tiny smirk before twisting his wrist enough to lower one end of the staff towards the quivering lump of feathers that was Jane. "I gave my word. Nothing will harm you here."

"Ok." Qamar trusted Cullen to keep his word, and Jane trusted Qamar to always want her safe and sound. Thus, Jane could trust Cullen's word. Her fingers shook as she reached up to grip the surprisingly warm wood with both hands.

The Commander took a step back and towards his proper recruits. "If you have need of me, my lady, give the word." If this was a movie, he would have bowed. But this was real, and Jane wasn't anywhere near as impressive as a magical and fantastical Commander. She was lucky that he even wasted his time on her.

She gave him a tiny wave as she stood up, her wings flapping idly once and then shifting on her back to balance her body against gravity. The staff warmed in her hands as she examined it, the smooth black wood stave capped with even blacker metal, counterbalanced with some pale ivory substance that Jane didn't want to think twice about. Something about it made her smile, that bit of chill in her stomach that had never gone away swirling up her body to twine around the metal.

"Good. It suits you."

It felt like it did. And it was blissfully wonderful to lean just a bit forward to balance more of her weight on the end of the staff as opposed to all of it on her poor abused toes. So what if she looked like some little wrinkled grandmother? She was comfortable, and the only person who was paying attention to her was the man who apparently played with her genetic structure like it was putty in his hands.

Jane did not like the fact that Solas picked up another staff from against a tree. She also didn't like it when he followed the letter of the law Qamar had laid down and ignored the spirit of it entirely.

He was a wolf in the woods, waiting patiently for the little bird to hop out of the tree so he could gobble her up whole.

Jane's fingers tightened on the wood, and she could feel a little touch of frost from the rounded knob atop it. She didn't want to take her eyes off Solas. If the Commander had touched it and deemed it safe, even if it had been given to her by Solas, then that meant it was safe enough for her to touch. Things in this place were not normal, not when two moons rose in the sky and magic was as real as breathing. It made sense that she, a new mage, would need to learn how to use some sort of conduit for magic.

If Harry Potter got a wand, Gandalf got a staff. And this place didn't seem to be anywhere near the fantastic joy of the Wizarding World.

So they wanted her to use a staff. That made more sense than anything else Solas's training had been about since the beginning. Feel the way magic felt on the back of her teeth and the tips of her fingers? Hold the shattered remains of a spell that she understood about as well as advanced calculus? None of that made any sense. At least she could touch the staff and see what she was doing with it.

"I will be departing with Adaar in the morning. While I am gone, you will focus on learning to control yourself. Emotional outbursts are unnecessary." He held out his own staff with a bored twist of his upper lip. "I expect you will find this concept much more palatable. With me, da'len."

She closed her eyes out of force of habit, breathing in like he always wanted her to every time he tried to supposedly teach her something. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Down and deeper until the cold spread its familiar icy chill through her veins.

If she peeked out from under her lashes, she could almost see the paws of the wolf and its tail encircling Solas from across the clearing. Her wings went wide and spread snowflakes with every flutter, and Jane did what she did best: followed after someone else's lead.

Solas pulled his magic from the wolf ghosting behind him, ran it through his body, and let it center in the head of the staff. His body was a conduit between the wolf that embodied his dream and the literal thing that all but thrummed with the dimness of reality. That much even Jane could understand.

Technicolor dreams beneath her wings and arctic winds brushing against her heart, the whisper of cold in her veins turning her fingertips and lips blue as she breathed hoarfrost and rime. Pull and push, twist until the magic quivered just out of reach. But this cold wasn't for Jane so much as it was for the staff in her hands. The metal at the top froze, impossible frost dripping from it in little sheets, and Jane could feel her fingers chill from the unnatural cold.

"The staff is the most essential part of a mage's skillset. If you hope to master your magic, you must learn the forms."

Jane winced. Fighting people wasn't something she was particularly comfortable with, a fact that Caroline had harped on for years. She never wanted to stand up for herself but kept throwing herself into situations where she would end up needing Caroline to bail her out. And now the one person in existence that terrified and infuriated her beyond all comprehension wanted her to learn how to use a weapon.

Shove it down. Bite it back.

In through the nose.

_Out through the mouth._

_Tell him to go fuck himself, Jane._

"Yes sir." She kept her head low and her opinions to herself, and Jane spun the stick when she was told. Jane hadn't spent hours helping Caroline practice her cheer routines for the A squad while she was still regulated to the Colorguard for no reason. Just because she hadn't had to do it in a few years didn't mean that her body wouldn't remember it after a while.

Solas told her to use both hands so she didn't hurt her wrists.

Might as well tell her gramma how to suck eggs.

She balanced the staff on the back of her hand to test the weight, rolled it over to her palm, and wiggled her fingers until the thing wiggled to its sweet spot. It was a bit heavier than expected at one end, but nowhere nearly as bad as the one time the military kids got their rifles and practice poles mixed in with the cheer squad's and both of them had rifles and poles flying every which way for an hour before someone noticed.

Caroline had hated that.

Over the wrist, flick it up, one step forward to catch it snug in the opposite palm, let it arc over her chest so the ball was at the ground. Spin it up and up, use the thumb like she didn't want to break her fingers, and keep her eyes on that horizon point.

Full points only for Caroline's team.

Turn on one heel and toss at the same time, arm up to catch the whistling arc of cold metal and wood that whispered of the tundra in little bits of periwinkle and lace snowflakes. Ignore the whistle from the crowd way over there. Nobody cat called the flag girls, that was where all the ugly girls with connections or 'sweet personalities' went.

Jane had always been the sweet girl with the best connection.

Solas said to spin, and so spin Jane did.

Funny how no one ever noticed that cheerleaders practiced for hours every day. The same drills, over and over, until they all got it perfect. And then an hour at home in the driveway where Caroline made her call time.

Jane might not have been a pom, but she damn well put in the hours.

_That's my girl._

_See, he doesn't know everything._

She spun the staff in both hands, lazy as anything alive, and Jane simply smiled at Solas. "Was there anything else you wanted to teach me today?" The low snicker from the regular recruits had Jane smiling even sweeter and dipping the fastest curtsey known to every girl who watched far too many Barbie princess movies in supposed deference.

Solas smiled, much in the same way that a grandfather humored a particularly rambunctious child. "Very good. Now we will learn to channel. Attend, da'len."

Jane winced and clutched her staff to her chest.

It was going to be a long day.

By the time the sun set, Jane had come to the conclusion that Solas was actually a petty man that lived to make her suffer just so he could watch her squirm. Magic practice, if you could even call it that, was supposedly concluded around lunchtime. And after a brief respite of bread with some sort of crumbly cheese and sausage that made Jane's nose wrinkle as she politely declined, she was supposed to be escorted to the horse barn where she could continue her actual occupation.

This was not the case.

While Cullen did do his self-appointed duty and delivered his mage charge to her own duties. And he would have gotten away from it all if Solas hadn't been determined to continue her education.

Thankfully, Jane was more than happy to keep the staff leaning up against Apple's stall while she vigorously mucked the stall and kept her horse fed. Since Cullen was forced to work from the barn for the day, messengers running to and fro with paperwork for him to fill out on what was supposed to be Jane's desk as the cavalry's interim stablemaster, Jane had the envious position of watching a fully grown man clench his jaw hard enough to make a vein pop.

Every time she grabbed a bundle of hay on the end of a pitchfork, she could see Cullen have to physically restrain himself from going to help. Paperwork was not what Cullen Stanton Rutherford enjoyed doing, that much was clear.

Solas, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy randomly popping around corners to see if he could startle Jane into screaming at him. After the third time, Jane chalked the day up to a mystery that was far too complex for the likes of her to question and began placidly smiling her way through every interaction until Solas got bored.

By the time dinner rolled around, Jane had gotten into a strange system with Cullen where she did the rounds of the stables with her notebook, then looped back to her office to speed recite all the notes from each horse that needed attention. Cullen would write them down, and then off Jane would go to the next bunch.

Solas disappeared in the middle of it, apparently satisfied that Jane wasn't going to have a frozen meltdown in the midst of all of the Inquisition's precious horses. Or, what was more likely, the elf had simply gotten bored of Jane ignoring him.

Caroline had taught her that trick, and Jane would forever be grateful for it in times like these.

And when the sun went down, Jane eased herself around the doorframe. Cullen seemed to be entirely content to spend the rest of his days drowning in the paperwork that kept the majority of the Inquisition's day to day running, but Jane was not quite so inclined. She knocked gently on the door to the stablemaster's office as it was and waited patiently for him to look up. "Shouldn't we be going back, Commander?"

He gave her a rueful smile as he stood up, one that quickly turned into a wince as the cold hit him. "Should I assume you have no cloak again, my lady?" Jane had a tiny hiccup that could be a laugh, and Cullen seized on it with all the enthusiasm of a dog with a bone. "My lady Jane with a sense of humor? Perish the thought."

And she truly laughed then as he offered her his arm, the both of them burdened by stacks of paperwork that held next to no meaning to Jane, and escorted her back to the chantry proper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come hang out with me. Talk in real time. Make friends. Be gay. Do crimes.
> 
> [There's a Discord.](https://discord.gg/THDKVDhzga)


	11. Points of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caution tags for self-harm and we've got some gore back.
> 
> “Instead of swinging back and forth between individual points of truth, each piece we learn should build upon another to bring us closer to the full truth.”  
> ― Amy Layne Litzelman

Jane didn't watch Qamar and his group leave so much as she spent an hour of her morning throwing things at people to load onto a bunch of horses that the Inquisition wouldn't miss. They had far too many war-horses with not enough templars or chevaliers to ride them, and so it took very little thought as to which horses were selected for them all to ride.

The most thought Jane had to put into anything was how big of a horse would be needed to carry Qamar without breaking its back after the third mile.

She very carefully avoided thinking about Solas. Solas, who had held the fabric of her being in the palm of his hand and twisted it into the shape he found most appealing. Solas, with his dream so large and looming with far too many bright red eyes, who wanted nothing more than to set her free and watch her fall to the ground like a sick baby bird. She could feel the shreds of his spells around her now, inside her, tweaking and pulling until the broken seams fit together in ways they were never meant to.

He took away her humanity in the name of his self-righteousness, and all she was left with was the shattered glass pieces of herself.

Instead, Jane would rather think about the horses Dennet left in her care.

Horse by horse they were sent out, their tack and kit accounted for in Jane's little notebook so she could report back to Cullen and eventually Dennet. Most importantly, she took note of what each member of Qamar's elite force needed, and what each had requested in particular. That list she wrote out on a piece of parchment for each, carefully using the little bit of Trade she had learned to write from Thurston and the Commander's ever-expanding corner of paperwork hell. If she was to keep them equipped every time that they went off, it made sense to know what would be expected each time she kitted them out.

The Commander said that the Spymaster wanted copies of that so she could arrange to have the camps set up with the proper gear in advance.

Jane didn't argue.

Sister Nightingale, despite the unholy gleam in her eyes every time she spotted Jane's wings, had taken a hands-off approach that was rapidly becoming mildly stalkerish. As such, Jane did whatever was necessary to keep Leliana from doing whatever odd and terrifying thing she truly wanted to do with or to Jane.

Spending her time in the quiet routine of her new life filled Jane with a strange sort of joy. No more Solas shaped surprises, no more forced magic lessons. She was free to take care of the horses like Dennet asked her to in the first place. And all she had to do was keep to herself, avoid demons, and let the Commander fulfill his personal mission of escorting her to and from places. If she didn't feel like it, Jane didn't even have to talk to anyone about anything other than how much feed each horse needed.

And it was absolutely perfect.

It had been two days since Qamar left. Two whole days of the happiest Jane had been since she had left the farm. Two blissful days where she smelled like horse and went to bed bone tired from an honest day’s work.

Of course, it wouldn't last. Fate didn't like Jane enough to leave her be.

The woman at the gate didn't bother introducing herself. She was righteous fury, brown skin on display under a dress that had become nothing but rags, black hair dreadlocked and festooned with clay and silver beads, blackened mouth like she had swallowed ink, and dirt caked under long nails. But the woman held her human skull-topped staff with a grace that not even Solas could attain. Barefoot even in the snow, the woman held her bandaged body with a quiet rage as she stalked up the path to Haven and glared up at the gates.

Jane watched her and the collection of more horned men and women that followed her approaching, and then made the executive decision to do what she did best: scream and hope that the collective pledge to cut her head off at the first sign of a demon held true.

The woman threw her head back and laughed, her teeth white and tongue black as she cackled like a harpy. "Oh, call for what help will come, sweet child. We have enough bad blood to settle here that we can wait." The woman turned to those behind her. "Do we rely on the voices of children now, my darlings?"

The qunari behind her, because Jane knew what they were called now, paused in what was obviously a military formation the likes that Cullen had been trying to drill the new recruits in for what felt like forever. As one they rattled their weapons, smashing swords to shields and stomping their feet in cadence as they marched in place. The roar they made was loud enough to wake the dead, and Jane cut herself off midscream in surprise.

The frost on the doorframe from her surprised hiccup made the woman shake her head at her. "Poor girl. Come, come. Down from your little nest where we can see you." She snapped her ringed fingers, the black tattoo lines on them contrasting nicely with the bright silver on each knuckle, and motioned Jane forward. "What manner of madness is this?"

Jane kept herself hidden behind the barn door, but she couldn't help but creep a little closer. Qunari, so far at least, tended to be kind and understanding of her current physical issue. And mages, like the terrifying witch at the gates, didn't seem to be the sort to try to turn her into a feather pillow.

"Wings on a girl? How curious." She breathed in and gave an inky grin. "You taste like magic, girl. The first snow of winter come early on the breeze. Come, child. Let us see what has been done to you."

Jane trusted this woman much more than she did Solas. This woman was at least honest about the fact that someone in Haven had wronged her and the lot of her bandaged Qunari friends. She sounded like the kind old woman down the street, the one with tears in her eyes when she watched children playing in her driveway. Everyone called her Auntie, no matter if you were related to her or not, and she was always there with sage wisdom from generations past and cookies baked fresh that morning.

Until one day Auntie was gone.

But it was that bone-deep recognition that had Jane peeking out and carefully making her way out of the barn. This woman would be kind to the weak because the world had made her too cantankerous with bad fortune and time to be anything else. Jane made it halfway to the woman before she heard the first clatter of armor.

The Commander and Spymaster could move at a dead run faster than their soldiers and agents could, and that alone made the woman smile. "Ah, and there they are. The Chantry dogs."

"Maker's breath-" Cullen breathed around his shock, but his grip on his sword and shield didn't falter. "You're alive."

"Did you expect us to die? Not for you, boy. But you owe us in coin and blood, and we've come to collect." Jane didn't like the edge of the woman's smile, the way her rings glittered menacingly in the light.

The red-haired woman that Jane only knew from a distance and preceding reputation gave a smile just as lethally frigid as the witchy woman's. "By all means, we will pay what we owe. If it is rightfully owed."

Jane could feel the ground rumble beneath her feet, that pressure she had come to understand was magic building behind the technicolor lines. This woman, this angry woman with rage in her eyes and ink on her tongue, was more than ready to throw the force of her dreams behind her words. "Ah, the Left Hand. You know what we have come here for."

Leliana stepped down the path, brushing past Cullen with all the lethal potential of a naked blade. "Mirena Adaar. I'm surprised to find you still among the living."

Jane was in danger. She didn't know why, but she was in danger.

"The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." Mirena Adaar, the long grieved wife of one Qamar Adaar, was not dead.

Cullen was as confused as Jane, and he jerked his head a fraction for Jane to hide behind him. Whatever catfight was about to happen in front of Haven, Cullen wanted Jane to be nowhere near it. Jane all but bolted to make it from the barn to the relative safety provided by the large blonde man with the shield.

She clutched at his mantle and he squared his shoulders in preparation for what promised to be a bloodbath. "Stay behind me, Jane."

Leliana and Mirena were close enough to gut each other and mad enough to make it messy.

Mirena inclined her head. Leliana inclined hers back.

"It's good to see you hale and whole. I had worried, but it seems my fears were misplaced."

"You think some explosions in the sky would kill me, Nightingale? You've inhaled too much of that incense of yours and drank too much bad wine."

Cullen and Jane had entered some strange alternate universe and neither of them knew what to do with this realization.

Leliana cracked first, giggling into her hand like a schoolgirl, and wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye. "Ah, but it would have made such a great tale."

Mirena threw her head back to all but cackle. "Singing songs of my demise already? How unlike you. But, you and yours... it's merely business."

"Your husband was here." Leliana closed her eyes a fraction with the ghost of a smile. A cruel smile, better fit for the gallows, but a smile nonetheless. "And I do not believe the terms of your contract have been fulfilled."

Leliana held her hand out, palm flat, to keep Cullen from rushing forward. The mage held the tip of her staff beneath Leliana's chin, the weight of her dream pressing at the thin line that divided reality from the technicolor wonder. "Mind your words, bard."

The redhead smiled darker than the deep and toothier than the shark that lurked in it. "Or? You'll cut out my tongue and grind it up for a potion? A bit beneath a Witch of the Wild, is it not?"

The witch snarled, and the qunari behind her shifted restlessly. "What did you do to my man?"

Leliana shrugged. "Nothing at all. He is the most beloved Herald of Andraste, and we are blessed by his magnanimous kindness and generosity."

"He did that thing where he picks the most annoying one and kills them horribly as an example, didn't he?" She sighed, the broken sound of one who had been married so long that even their other half's worst habits were as easily anticipatable as the sun and moon's journey across the sky.

"We grieve the loss of one of our own."

Mirena snorted, whirling her staff in her hands in a move so fluid Jane all but cried inside. She ran her ink-stained fingers over the top of the skull, long nails drumming rhythmically against the bone, as she settled against her hip. "What do you want, Leliana?"

"Finish your contract: come and serve the Inquisition. Simple enough for a woman of your talents and means."

Mirena pointed over her shoulder at the swirling green wound in the sky that was the Breach. "There's no magic in all the wilds that knows how to fix that."

Leliana gave a thin-lipped smile and inclined her head gently. "We believe we have a solution to that."

"You gave my man no choice and give me even less. Where is he?"

Cullen cleared his throat, awkward in the tension between the two women. "Ah, if I may. Adaar has gone to rendezvous with a mercenary company called the Bull's Chargers-"

"The Chargers? Led by a one-eyed qunari, looks like he could stand a snowball's chance in Seheron against my man? I'll be damned, he's still alive." Mirena blinked incredulously and gave a snort of a laugh. "Threw him into a swamp once. Am I going to need to do it again?"

Leliana laughed and gestured for the ragged woman to follow her.

Whatever they said to each other paled in comparison to the worried look Cullen gave her as he seemed to draw back into himself. Like a lion sheeting its claws so as not to startle the mouse between its paws, Cullen smiled softly down at her. “Thank you for the warning, my lady.”

She blinked back up at him, her lashes catching on the tender skin as she blushed and- “You’re welcome.” It was best not to think about things she couldn’t change, or think about things that weren’t real.

He sketched her the tiniest bow before he left, and he gave her a surprisingly boyish smile when she laughed. “All’s well. I shall see you this evening.”

Jane rather quickly made up her mind that when she grew up, she wanted to be Mirena Adaar.

There was a quiet kind of violence about the woman, coiled up tight like a promise that lay just beneath the surface. Where Solas was an old thing, a wolf in the oldest woods, Mirena was something different. She held her potential in check with civility and grace, needling words that stung as much as they commanded.

“Someone has made a right mess of you, sweetness.” Mirena’s magic felt like the earth beneath their feet: steady and unchanging.

Jane tasted green and growing things when the woman pressed her hand to Jane’s cheek, the one that still ached when she blinked or tried to chew. The grinding pop of her bones sliding into place would never stop bothering her, but at least the other woman had given her a fizzing drink that tasted like mint and berries and kept her from feeling even the slightest amount of pain.

“Heavy-handed brutes the lot of them. Blink once for me.” Jane, as always, did what she was told. She hadn’t expected the woman to track her down after she had finished with whatever negotiations and clandestine rendezvous Mirena had with Leliana, but track Jane down she did. “Now open your mouth- Chantry boy, were you aware that she is missing half of her throat?”

Cullen, leaning ever so casually against the wall like he wasn’t watching them both for fear of demonic possession and rebellion, started. “I beg your pardon?”

Mirena gave him a side-eyed look that spoke of murder. “What is done cannot be undone. That much, at least, your elf was correct on. What he did after... that I cannot decipher.” The fingers she pressed to the sides of Jane’s neck were gentle. “But she breathes, eats, sleeps, speaks. All things that living creatures do. She is no abomination, not from that.”

Cullen’s inhale was shaky, then steadied as he forced himself calm. "Then from what?"

Mirena flicked the tip of Jane's nose and frowned at the stiffness there. "The same thing that makes you call all mages abominations when they walk this child's path. There are traces of it if you know how to look." She snorted. "This Solas was correct. It neither helps nor hurts, but there is something that has made a connection with your lady."

Jane tilted her head as asked, all the way back for Mirena to run blackened fingers down her chest and feel the way Jane breathed. "It haunts her. Not quite a possession, but it still lingers. Whether it be a ghost or a spirit, I cannot tell." She snapped her fingers and Jane followed the tips of them with just her eyes. This, this much she understood. It was just like having a physical done, but instead of her mother asking all sorts of terrible questions... there was Cullen.

Cullen, who grimaced when Mirena stared at him. The same Cullen who closed his eyes for a long moment and looked like he fought a long war with himself before he opened them again. “Is she a danger?”

Jane flinched when Mirena cackled. “To who? Boy, this child spooks at her own shadows on the wall. Whatever has been done, it has broken her quite well.”

“Caroline always does the fighting. Not me.” Her voice was louder than it should have been as she sat on her little bed, her feet dangling off the ends even as her wings drooped. “I don’t like it.” Jane wasn’t fond of the way Mirena patted her knee with one hand like some sort of hilarious puppy.

“As it should be. Sweet things should not be forced to grow thorns. But, you are as hale and whole as could be, all things considered. You could use a bit more meat on your bones, as could half the people here.” Mirena pushed the chair she sat on backward with a screech.

Cullen cleared his throat. “It was-”

“It wasn’t his fault. I’m just... a picky eater.” Jane cut him off before he could attract any more of Mirena’s simmering rage than he already had.

Cullen squared himself up against Jane’s trembling vision. And for just a moment, Jane bought into the lie that he was an actual honest to goodness knight that had done some sort of sacrilegious oath to serve her. But no, he was simply the Commander and she was the interim stable girl that just happened to be damned with magic and the wrong sort of anatomy. “No. The blame is mine. I will do what must be done to make amends.”

Mirena watched them, her eyebrow quirked up in her bemusement. “Are you two quite finished?” She tapped her fingers against the top of Jane’s little desk, turned over a few slips of parchment to look at the little charcoal sketches that Jane had tried too hard to hide. “What is done cannot be undone. Make of it what you will, but it cannot be changed. My man charged you with her care.” The witch gave him a smile with too many teeth and not even a shred of affection. “Do it right, Chantry boy, or it’ll be on your head.”

Jane wanted nothing more than to bury her head under the pile of blankets and pillows that she seemed to be accumulating at a phenomenal rate from places she didn’t understand. Someone kept leaving her nice things in her cell, possibly several someones if the clashing aesthetics of their gifts seemed to suggest, and Jane wasn’t sure what to do with it all. So that was why Cullen was there. The one he was always shouting about with Qamar had been _her_. 

_"I have every intention of doing right by her. But it serves no one if I push the lady where she clearly does not want to go!"_

_"And what exactly would Adaar like me to do with Jane?"  
_

_"I, Cullen Stanton Rutherford, swear to Jeanmarie Smythe to speak the truth at all times and forever keep my word."  
_

Jane squirmed on the bed, her discomfort plain for all to see. "Commander?"

"My lady?" His voice was calm even in the face of those accusations.

_"What you will is all that shall occur. Nothing else. I promise."_

She swallowed hard, eyes squeezing shut as she tried to find the words to get past the lump in her throat. "What I will is what I get?"

Mirena stilled ominously as Cullen pushed himself off the wall. "As always, so long as it is within my power."

Jane nodded. "And you'll never lie to me?"

"Not willingly, you have my word."

"Ok. Did... did Ser do that because you told her to?" Jane tried very carefully not to look at either of them, choosing instead to pick lint from one of her many blankets. She licked dry lips with a tongue that was no longer human and spoke with a voice that was no longer her own. "Did-"

She never heard him cross the room or Mirena leave it. But she felt him take her hands in his and kneel on the floor in front of her and clear his throat awkwardly. "I ah- Maker's breath you do not mince your words, Jane."

"You promised." Jane didn't recognize the broken little thing that spoke, not when it hadn't been with her for all twenty-five years of her life, but she knew the words were still hers. "Was it your fault?"

Cullen gripped her fingers gently in his warm leather gloves, voice gentle as if it could spare her from the pain. "Yes."

Jane pulled her hands from his and tried to keep the room from spinning. It was real. Real. Not a bad dream. It was Cullen's fault she hurt, Solas's fault she would never wake up herself again, Qamar's for taking her away from Dennet and Elaina, and...

Caroline.

It was all Caroline's fault.

Stupid, stupid Jane.

It could never be Caroline's fault.

_Oh my God, Jane. Did you finally figure something out for yourself?_

_Did you finally figure out this isn't a dream?_

_It's always your fault._

_Stupid_ stupid _Ja_ ne.

_Just had to help._

Always had to help.

_Even when no one cares about you._

No one cared what happened to Jane.

There was something wet and warm on her face, sharp stinging things that scratched at all the parts that were wrong.

So many parts were wrong.

Feathers under her eyes.

The soft bits of her nose gone hard and pointed, black at the tip.

Feathers on her ears.

Ears that moved with every emotion.

Feet that split and clawed with curved talons against the ground every time she stepped.

Oh god, she could see them out of the corner of her eyes, bright and clear even through the pain and the feeling of something shattering inside her.

Wrong.

Wrong.

_Wrong._

She grabbed at the fluffy slate grey things covering her left arm like the worst kind of opera glove, found the longest feathers that started at her wrist and _ripped_ until the air was filled with blood-flecked grey feathers. Scratched her nails through the skin until it peeled up in strips and chunks like a bad pomegranate bursting under pressure.

It was Jane's fault.

Her fingers were slippery with some hot thing that just wouldn't let her grip all the parts that weren't Jane. Her arm went to her mouth and someone shouted something she couldn't hear as her teeth dug in and in and spat out mouthfuls of blood-covered feathers onto the floor.

The titmouse in the room went peter-peter-peter in terror, shrill chirps of panic that pierced her ears.

Wings moved, flapping backward in her frenzy.

Wings.

Jane _didn't have wings_.

Slippery talons went back and _up,_ even as she fell to her knees on the cold floor, her toes bending and bending as if she could push herself into place, her arms all but dislocating as she reached and reached. Pluck and scrabble until she had the bones that didn't belong in her hands and she could close her blood slick fingers around them to rip and _rip_ until all she could see was the thing she hated the most floating through the room without a care.

Feathers.

_Feathers._

Feathers.

 _Rip them_ off _and see what's left of_ stupid _, stupid_ Jane.

 _Or_ we _could_

 _H_ ur _t him_ li _ke he hurt_ us _._

"JANE!" She heard him yelling through the sting of the gold slamming tight around the shape of her dream, but it wasn't enough to stop the _wrong_ that sang in her veins.

Jane stopped moving, only the sound of her shallow breathing disturbing the peace. Cullen. He did this too.

She had talons now, bloody things that fell from her arm when she sobbed in the rapidly chilling room, something in the floor cracking but holding steady. Bloody things that dripped dripped dripped and made little black puddles on the floor. "I'm a monster now, aren't I?"

Jane looked up at him with eyes that leaked a strange slurry of blood and frozen tears, her vision twisting and twisting in scratched out technicolor whirls. She let the words roll around on her tongue like shards of broken glass, and shaped her question around her hiccups. "Truth or _lie_ , Cullen?"

"Maker's breath-" Shining steel in his hands and Jane breathlessly cried and cried around her shivering. Of course. Jane without Caroline was a disaster waiting to happen and of course, she did it wrong after all.

"Move, you useless boy!" Something slammed against the floor with a thump and the crackle singing of the lines snapped around and pulled-

_I will not be denied!_

_She belongs to me, Witch!_

Something slammed shut again in her, deep inside where the cold lived now, and Jane slumped over like a marionette with its strings cut. Everything was fog, muted and fluffier than clouds, and Jane breathed in frantic gulps of air until she calmed herself.

And finally, blessedly quiet silence.

"Well, Chantry boy. A demon it is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since chapter one. Guys. Chapter. One.
> 
> [There's a Discord.](https://discord.gg/THDKVDhzga)
> 
> Come scream at me. It's fun.


	12. Cover of a Romance Novel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[...] he's tipping my all-men-are-jackasses theory completely over the edge of the scale. To add insult to injury, he looks like the damn cover of a romance novel. I hate those covers.”  
> ― N.L. Gervasio, Nemesis
> 
> Y'all. It's fluffy. I dunno how it happened either.

There was soft warmth around her and the scent of hay, horse, and sun-bleached cotton. Something else warm ran through her hair and she could feel herself moving back and forth as if someone was holding her against their chest and rocking her as they hummed under their breath. Everything tasted like mint, and her tongue was thick in her dry mouth. Jane made a tiny groan, a groggy little flutter of her eyelashes, and the things on her head stopped moving. "Good morning, child. I had not expected to see you so soon."

Calm and level headed, gentle with her words. Jane knew that voice. Had known it since the first time she lurched down the path and woken up in the first minty green haze and would know anywhere. She made a soft sound of agreement and burrowed her head into the familiar warmth of Mother Giselle's chest. 

Jane didn't know the meaning of the words, but she let Mother Giselle lull her back to sleep with the melody of a sweet Parisian lullaby.

She woke to the sound of a quill scratching against parchment, the neighing of horses, the stamping of hooves, and one dwarf taking the piss out of someone.

"So, Curly. Are you sure this is a good idea? No offense, but this probably isn't going to go over well with Gardenia."

The long sigh was familiar. "What would you have me do?"

Opening her eyes was like trying to swim through molasses and what she could see through the gaps of her lashes was enough to confuse her. They moved her again. Only this time they moved everything that had been in the room with Jane along with Jane herself.

"You don't talk to girls much, do you?"

"Maker's breath, why am I asked that so often?"

"So I'll take that as a no."

"Precisely what does my talking to women have to do with the lady?"

"Huh. Well, that's a story I didn't see coming. A mabari and his lady, huh? Have fun on your walks? Maybe catch a few sticks?"

The red blob was sideways, or maybe she was sideways. But Jane recognized that desk, that mess of fur that she still wanted to pet and figure out if it was as soft as it looked. Why was Cullen at her desk? Well, Dennet's desk that Jane had taken over temporarily.

Cullen sighed. That was the kind of sigh where he probably pinched the bridge of his nose. The less graceful recruits seemed to drag that out of him, or Varric when the dwarf was giving him the disapproving kind of lecture.

"Here's a thought. Maybe try hard not to scare her. Bring her flowers. Don't draw your sword on her the minute she starts crying." Jane had never heard Varric talk without a smile in his voice before. Then again, most of the time he talked to her and not about her when she was around.

"It was an act on instinct that will not happen again."

Varric grinned at him, a flash of teeth that disappeared like quicksilver. "Looks like you can teach a dog new tricks."

"I aim to please." Cullen gave a wry chuckle, a heavy thing in the silence that did nothing to make the conversation any lighter.

Varric snorted. "So, we keep her drugged up with enough magebane to keep the demon at bay. That part of the plan I understand. What I don't get is why you're here when the last time you talked to her about what was wrong with her... well, you remember."

Jane blinked, long and slow, until the gritty bits squeezed out with her tears and she could see more than just a desk with Cullen hunched over it. There was Varric, boots up on the desk as he reclined in a chair that she recognized as her little one from the cell.

"I gave her my word, Varric."

"Uh-huh. Right. How's that working out for you? Because from here, it looks like it's going to shit."

Jane couldn't help but give a tiny giggle, the loopiest kind that felt like she was floating on cloud nine and her wisdom teeth were fresh out. "Mm... shit."

"Language, Gardenia. Ladies don't say bad words unless they want to give Curly an aneurism." 

Heavy feet moved across the packed dirt floor, and suddenly her little field of vision was filled with the wry smiling face of her favorite dwarf. Only dwarf. Was it rude to call him a dwarf? And he laughed like someone had just told him the best kind of joke.

"You can call me Varric. All my favorite people do."

Huh. Favorite people. Jane was a favorite person to someone? That was new. "Oh. Ok, Varric." She flexed fingers that felt like pins and needles and did her best to try and push herself up from where someone had laid her out flat on her stomach. Varric was quick to offer her a steadying hand. Some part of her flinched away from his touch, his flesh-toned hands contrasting with her stained talon tipped fingers.

He grabbed her hand anyway, firm and proper while he looked her right in the eye. "You just go back to sleep, Magnolia. You want me to tell you a story?" Varric was gentle and serious at the same time, and Jane could feel her eyes slide shut as he rubbed his thumb over the back of her unbandaged hand.

"Doggies?"

Varric gave a wicked grin as he helped Jane sit up enough to put her head on his shoulder. "Doggies, huh?" And he didn't say anything when her wing flapped open and tucked around him as she nuzzled into him. "I know just the one. Once upon a time, there was a mabari-"

"What's a mabari?"

Varric patted her knee. "You want me to tell the story?" Jane's sleepy nod had him chuckling. "All right. Once upon a time, there was a mabari. He was a good dog, loyal to a fault. A big and red-"

Jane giggled. "Clifford?"

"Sure, Magnolia. His name was Clifford. And Clifford was a big, red, mabari. All teeth and drool, like all the best mabari are. But a lot of people didn't like Clifford, because Clifford was in charge of guarding all the birds in their cages."

"Don't like cages."

"Most birds don't. But one day, all the little birds decided they didn't want to be in cages anymore. And you know what they did?"

"Mm... peck peck peck."

"There you go. They pecked and pecked until Clifford and all the other mabari had to let them out. But there were many other mabari that wanted to catch all the birds and put them back in their cages." Varric didn't break eye contact with Cullen. "And so the mabari and the birds went to war."

"Bad doggies."

Varric made a low grunt of agreement. "Very bad doggies. But Clifford still wanted to help all the birds. One day, someone left a lost little baby bird on Clifford's doorstep. He was supposed to guard this little bird, but Clifford had other things that he thought were more important. So he gave the baby bird to another mabari to take care of."

Jane's eyes opened a crack and she ignored the little drool puddle that accumulated on Varric's shoulder.. "I don't like this story."

"Most people don't. One day little bird fell out of her nest. Because the mabari that was supposed to guard her told her that she was a bad bird because she didn't know how to fly, and the little bird tried so hard to make the mabari happy."

"Bad bad doggy."

"Wasn't she? But Clifford found the little bird, and he took her all the way back to his house so he could guard the little bird instead. Day in and day out, night after night, Clifford stayed at the little bird's side. Sound familiar, Curly?"

"Why do you call him Curly? He's the Commander." Jane flapped a wing in Cullen's direction, a slow movement that still managed to almost smack the man in the face from the length of her pinions. "It's rude."

"You want the story or not, Magnolia?"

Jane blinked, long and slow, and snorted from her little beaky nose. "Not. I'm not tired," she slurred. "Wanna go pet Apple." She pushed herself up from Varric's shoulder with a flap strong enough to blow paperwork around the little room, then swayed in place. "Cullen. You haveta take me to the horses. As I will. You swore. Swore? Cuz I'm a lady."

Varric chuckled even as Cullen rolled his eyes heavenward for strength in this trying time. "Well, you heard her. Little bird wants the nice big doggy to take her for a walk. You're Ferelden, you know how mabari are."

She threw her hands up like it was the best rollercoaster. "Yeah! Cliffords should be nice to birds!"

Cullen went down on one knee and turned as he did, his back to Jane as he gave a sigh that came from his very soul. "Very well then. As my lady wills."

Jane flopped forward onto his back with a little giggle, wrapping her arms around his neck even as he carefully arranged her legs around his waist to preserve her decency and what little reputation Cullen was about to have left when this was all said and done. He gripped her under her knees and rose in one smooth motion that had her throwing her head back to laugh.

"Now I have officially seen everything." Varric whistled low and sharp. "I owe Ruffles two silvers."

Jane didn't see his face because she was too busy shoving her upper body into the fluffy wonder that was the fur on Cullen's mantle. But she could hear the scowl when Cullen spoke. "Not a word, Varric."

She snuck a peek over Cullen's shoulder to see Varric shrug and throw his hands up nonchalantly. "No skin off my back. Ruffles and Nightingale are going to find this out all on their own."

Cullen was warm and smelled nice. Like leather, the sharp sting of metal, ground-up elfroot, and the tiniest trace of something she couldn't put into words but reminded Jane of her grandfather's cologne. It was _wonderful_ and Jane wondered to see if she could put him in a bottle and spray him on things to snuggle when she felt sad.

"Yup. Just wondering, is denial an essential part of the stoic templar commander persona?"

Cullen's hands clenched just enough for Jane to squeak in protest and smack his shoulder. "Bad dog! I wanna go pet horses. You promised."

The man would deny bouncing her on his back in retribution to his dying day. No one was there to witness except for one dwarf who knew better and one mage riding the best kind of euphoria from the beginning stages of Mirena's magebane concoction dosage plan. He would also deny any kind of laughter from the inevitable high pitched squeak that Jane made in her shock. Nudging the office door open with one boot, he jostled Jane slightly for her to pay attention. "Wings in, my lady, and mind the door."

Her arms went up until her fingertips touched, the joints of her wings rolling into the gap in order to stretch the feathery limbs out behind her. "Kay." Jane's legs locked around Cullen's waist, her malformed toes curled out to keep her talons from scratching at him. "Velociraptor backpack!"

Cullen cleared his throat and stepped through the door even as Varric gave up on pretending and all but howled with laughter. "Sweet Maker have mercy." He gave a roll of his shoulders that jostled Jane enough for her to slap her hands on his shoulders and dig her talons into his mantle for balance. "Not a word."

Varric cackled from behind them. "Wouldn't even dream of it."

Jane did not sober up by the time Cullen carried her past all the stalls, on which Jane had hung little wooden placards with their corresponding horse's names written painstakingly (in an alphabet only she could read) with her talons dipped in paint. Jane had given up on using quills and what passed for pencils when she wanted her writing to be legible. No one but Jane knew all of the horse's names, but Cullen appeared to know exactly where he was going.

Last horse on the left, one of the closest to the stable doors in the event of an emergency. Jane had spent an embarrassingly long time trying to make friends with that particular giant of a horse. Unlike all the fancy horses that the chevalier tended to fuss over, this particular stallion looked like it would be just as at home on some tiny farm as it would in war. And Jane loved every massive bit of it from the top of its ears to the bottoms of its hooves.

Nineteen and a half hands tall, white feathery legs and mane, and a massive amount of muscle made up one majestic bay that wanted nothing more than to spend his time lazing about with Apple and trying to lick Jane's hair into a mohawk.

Dennet had introduced her to the concept of the destrier, the kind of prized warhorse that he was famous for. But it had been Elaina who told her about the true beasts Dennet loved to acquire. The animal that poked his head over the edge and whickered softly was one such piece of prime horseflesh, and he was as excited to see them as Jane was to see him.

"Sterling!" The horse nodded his head and tossed it enough to make his mane wave, pawing at the ground in his joy. "I wanna pet him."

"Of course." Jane could feel Cullen shaking between her legs with the laughter that he was gamely holding back, but she was too enamored with the idea of reaching over Cullen's shoulders to scratch the length of the stallion's nose with the tips of her talons. The itchy spot between his eyes was always a favorite, and Sterling craned his head to let Jane have better access. "Mind your manners, Sterling. My lady is fragile."

"No, I'm not. I'm a lady. That means I don't start fights, but I finish them." She only wobbled a little bit, honest. Cullen's grunt and squeezing of her legs for balance was him just being dramatic.

The gelding in the stall next to Sterling poked his head out, the brown palfrey much calmer at the prospect of being so close to the stable's favorite thing to lick. His white mane obscured his eyes, and Jane made a note to learn how to make pretty little braids if only to save the poor dear from his own struggles. Cullen barked out a laugh. "Good morning to you as well, Hamish."

Jane giggled when the mammoth horse in front of her snorted hard enough to blow her bangs straight off her face. She all but crawled over Cullen to reach just a little bit further and ended up with nothing but her wings flapping vainly and her best impression of a fish flopping on dry land. "Up!"

Cullen sighed. "As my lady wills." He took a single step forward and almost fell over with the speed that Jane flapped and _leaped_. "Maker's breath. _Jane!_ "

"Culleeeeen." She giggled and Cullen sagged like a broken man. Undoing the latch on the heavy stall door was the work of a moment. Getting Jane through the opening without her lunging at the prancing horse and falling flat on her face was something else.

In the end, Cullen settled for simply leaning Jane against Sterling's flank and letting her pet the horse to her heart's content while he stood behind her. He kept his hands at a respectful spot above her hips and gamely tried his best to not look at the expanse of bare skin between her wings that followed the curve of her spine and stopped just above the thatch of feathers that were rapidly becoming a viable tail. Cullen forced his eyes to the ceiling because staring at a lady's naked back was conduct unbefitting of an officer.

No matter how pale and soft it was.

Or how there was a little mole right on the side of her throat.

"Cullen, take me."

Cullen forgot how to breathe and swallowed air down the wrong way. He didn't squeak, because squeaking was conduct unbefitting of an officer. "I beg your pardon?"

"Taaaake me. Wanna go for a ride." She wiggled in his hands, her feathers brushing over the back of his hands as she turned in his grip, giving him the tiniest little mischievous grin over her shoulder.

If he muttered to himself in the quiet darkness of the stall, no one would know. "Though I am flesh, Your Light is ever-present." Jane's wings flexed and he watched her muscles move under her pale skin.

"Cullen. You're not _listening_ to me." Jane had managed to turn around in his hold and clutched at the front of his mantle to keep herself upright.

It was just good manners to bend down to her level so she wouldn't have to reach up nearly so far.

Her eyes were a lovely shade of brown, glittering with tiny flecks of amber like a particularly good malt liquor in the sunlight. The curve of her nose ended in a hard little bit of black that made her look like a tiny little bird. She pulled him down and tilted her head _just right_ with a little giggle and the cutest little wrinkle of the soft parts of her nose. He couldn't stop himself from deciding that watching her lips part was like a rosebud unfurling in the sunlight. And the snap of her wings around him was like an embrace that went on forever.

"Maker's breath. And those I have called, they remember, and they shall endure."

Sterling bobbed his head and Cullen knew in his soul that the horse was laughing at him.

Somehow he managed to get a saddle on Sterling. Cullen marked that as a sign of good training and time well spent running drills. Who knew when one would need to drop everything and saddle a horse to ride after a cluster of apostates ready to summon demons with a wave of their crazed hands and a mouthful of lyrium.

That was before the rebellion. Before Anders had seen fit to decorate the length and breadth of Kirkwall with chunks of the chantry’s masonry.

What horrors he had done at Meredith’s ever capricious and increasingly bloodthirsty will would never be undone.

But at least he could saddle a horse while a woman (because his lady was indeed a woman, and how any of them missed that was a puzzle for another day) hung from his body like a particularly determined barnacle. If it had been anyone else for any other reason, Cullen would have been quite flattered by her attentions.

Jeanmarie Smythe of parts unknown only cared for the speed at which he could put a saddle on his destrier so she could ride Sterling into the sunset. Cullen was simply an instrument of her will, duty-bound by his mistakes, and what honor left to him after Meredith had ensured he could never feel fully right in his own skin. These hands had cut down apostates and blood mages alike, struck down mages who had failed their Harrowing, saved the lives of countless dozens at the cost of countless more. And all Jane wanted from him was to ride his Maker-damned horse.

She had asked for no apology. No demand for recompense had left her lips. All she had wanted to know who had made her hurt and if what Solas had done... made a monster of her. The sweetest soul he’d ever seen, who laughed at magic snowflakes when she tried to catch them on her tongue, who pet horses and slipped them delicate little sweets she’d not so stealthily pilfered from a jar on Cullen’s desk that hadn’t been there before Jane had woken up the first time.

Josephine had set it down with a quiet click, the unassuming ceramic filled with hard little candies even Cullen could tell were straight from Antiva and cost more than the jar she had put them in. Sweets for a sweet, an apology blooming across Haven in stages at the express direction of Josephine herself.

But Jane herself had asked for none of it. The only thing she had wanted, the only thing she had asked of Cullen and meant with every word, was to go home. Wherever her home was.

Cullen was many things, but stupid was not one of them. He knew damn well that Jane was no noble lady from the Free Marches, sequestered alone in a room to keep her safe from herself. Oh, sequestered he could see in every half-hidden smile and graceless movement. But she had no manners, no higher learning that spoke of money well spent. Jane was a blueblood because Varric said she was, not because her birth decided it.

Josephine and Leliana decided their way to correct their mishap was some kind of coordinated rumor mill out of legend. Lady Jeanmarie Smythe, no matter who or what she was before Josephine and Leliana made their moves, was a lady beyond reproach now. Cullen had even seen Leliana crack a smile, one that almost made him consider if he could best her in open combat, when one of her ravens brought back word that whatever rumor Josephine had whispered in some noble's ear had taken root.

The nobles that milled around Haven were hungry for gossip about the Herald of Andraste's ward, a fact that Josephine and Leliana were taking shameless advantage of.

That Jane was his lady now was as undeniable as Satina overhead. His honor demanded no less. If Jane asked and it was within his power, then Cullen should ensure it was up to his exacting standards.

It was a polite fiction that would become truth if Cullen told it to himself enough. In all truth, Cullen would never forget the broken look on her face and the blankness in her eyes as the blood poured out like tears and the demon stared back at him. It was the truth of his negligence that had broken her, as if she had built her mental resilience on the fact that he would keep her safe just like he said he would.

A templar who broke his word was no good of a templar at all these days.

If riding around a secluded paddock with a magebane drunk mage pressed against his back, the same mage who had her arms wrapped around his waist as her breath fluttered into a peaceful slumber, made him into a man of his word than who was Cullen to deny it. Besides, no one was around to see him make his war-horse prance for her amusement. What he did to make her happy was between Cullen, his horse, and the Maker.

Jane had the nicest dreams sometimes. Once, she dreamed that her dad brought her home a whole basket of fluffy puppies that bowled her over and licked and licked until she woke up laughing. Another time, somehow she had managed to float on the ocean and watched the stars and planets whirling overhead in explosions of PBS documentary graphics and Planet Earth commercials. Her favorite one was where all she did was dance in fields of impossible watercolor flowers.

But this dream was better because it had felt so very real.

Riding on a horse with her nose pressed against warmth that smelled like the best kind of cologne. Being carried around and treated like something worth more than she truly was. Like... a princess.

She woke up with a smile, rubbed her face into her pillow to feel the silk against her skin. It was nice to wake up without the recent addition of an ever-present crush of terror. No whispers in the back of her mind that called her mean names or reminded her of her failures. Just the feeling of sunshine and her skin finally settling over hollow bones, the way it had been for ages.

Jane pushed herself up with arms that didn't shake and fingers that didn't catch. The ice in her veins had warmed to a slight chill that barely prickled her skin, and everything was sunshine on her feathers and a strange feeling of happiness that was better than the time she won first place and a blue ribbon at the state fair.

She swung her legs over the side of a bed she had never woken up in before. When she finally did get up, she pushed aside a long sheet that had been suspended between her bed and what she had come to think of as her desk.

And there was Cullen, as always, with his back to her and his sword arm free to defend her from some nebulous miscreant. Drowning in an unending sea of paperwork while she simply smiled and brushed her skirts out. "Oh! Um, hello Commander."

His quill gave the smallest pause. "My lady." It was like he was waiting for her to say something, do something to warrant the tiny little smirk on his face.

She chirped once in her confusion, her head tilting slightly. "Um... good morning?"

He leaned back and smirked all the wider with her visible confusion. "Of course, my lady."

Jane didn't understand why it was so unsettling, but she ducked her head and fled out of what was supposed to be her own office, his deep laughter following in her tail-wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [There's a Discord.](https://discord.gg/THDKVDhzga)
> 
> [There's a Pinterest.](https://www.pinterest.com/mirrordaltokki/canary/)
> 
> [There's a Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Ch2wTvIT0nNZuv727YkJo)
> 
> For everything else, there's a comment section below.


	13. Poisons That Blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”
> 
> ― August Strindberg
> 
> Y'all ready? We went 50k+ and several months.... to get here. Prologue's over guys, actual story time now.

Horses, as it turned out, were wonderful beings that believed in their massive hearts that Jane was also a wonderful being. The pocket of mints and the promise of near-unlimited brushing tended to help with that assumption. But Jane soaked up the affection like a sponge and dished it out in kind. The horses were quieter when Jane was around, less likely to run her over when anyone threw the barn doors open for them to race around the paddock.

Jane was not the only one taking care of the Inquisition's horses, far from it in fact. She was only remarkable by the virtue of her inhuman body, and mucked the same stables as the rest of the stablehands. Sure, she had a leaflet of instructions from Horsemaster Dennet himself but that didn't mean she could read it.

She wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about horses, not like they seemed to think she was. Three weeks of hands on training while recovering from the worst sickness of her life at the same time did not a lifetime’s worth of horse care and maintenance make. Most of the people who worked in the stables knew more about how to take care of the horses and their tack than Jane ever would. Oh, the first few stable hands deferring to her had been interesting at first. 

But Jane knew that she wasn’t any better, and was probably worse, than all of them.

Lady Jeanmarie was kind to the common man and that endeared her faster than any fake rumors Josephine or Leliana could spread.

She was the lady from lands afar who smiled and put her delicate bird hands to the same work that the common man did without a single complaint. The same lady who was watched over by the Herald of Andraste and given into the care of the best and brightest Thedas had to offer.

Lady Jeanmarie wanted to be called Jane. Just Jane, plain Jane with no lady or Serah in the front. Jane, who wrinkled her little beaky nose at the grand airs the fancy Orlesian lords and lordlings put on in blatant attempts to gain her favor. They called her winsome and beloved, and she simply batted her feathery eyelashes at them and chirped in her confusion.

The Grey Warden Blackwall eventually parked himself in front of the barn doors while she fluttered around and around helping everyone she could. No stall was too dirty, no horse ever unruly in her presence, and the stablehands all gamely did their best not to laugh at her straw-covered robes and spit slick hair. She flashed them all tiny smiles back, a little less grounded after her traumatic experiences, and the Inquisition's stablehands could feel their hearts breaking.

Commander Rutherford had taken over her office, so a hapless recruit had been instructed to simply follow Jane with a clipboard and scribe down all the information she rattled off in regards to each horse and their care. A sensible rotation was put up in regards to each animal's need to exercise and have fresh air, allowing what horses the Inquisition had left to stretch their legs in hastily constructed paddocks.

"But... what are they _for?_ " Jane blinked at her new friend as she loaded a shovel with soiled hay that couldn't be saved for all the manure. "We have so many horses. What do we do with them?"

He looked up from the board, the much-belabored quill in his hand finally stilling. "Lady Jeanmarie?"

"Jane, please." She straightened and tossed the mess into the wheelbarrow, gently leaning the shovel against the stall wall. Jane rubbed her hands clean against a part of her butchered robe and gave him a thin smile. "Why keep all these horses for nothing?"

The poor recruit, now the freshly minted and still terrified aide de camp of the Commander himself, shook his head and shrugged. "For war, I suppose."

Jane liked Jim. He was as much a nobody as she was and just as terrified of being seen and noticed by important people. Mice recognized mice, and Jane was thrilled when Jim slipped for the first time and called her Jane. But then he corrected himself and she was back to being Lady Jeanmarie. She turned, toes splaying out and talons scratching into the packed dirt. "But we're not at war right now."

Jim shrugged again. "Tell that to those fancy Orlesian lordlings. They brought their chevalier and thought the Divine would give them an Exalted March." He handed her his clipboard and put his weight behind the wheelbarrow to wheel it out to be turned into some rather excellent compost. The Commander himself swore by the quality and the Hinterlands farmers were all too eager to put their coin into purchasing the Inquisition's manure at the end of each week. It didn't equate to the entire cost of keeping all the horses fed, but it did at least help.

Jane chirped, and Jim shook his head. "Sorry, I forget you're not from around here. It means war. A great big one, with all the templars and even the Seekers of Truth putting the Chantry's enemies to the sword. It's a big to-do. All those nobles cared about was putting their name in history by putting their soldiers in the mix. Bunch of cowards, the whole lot of them." He paused, eyes wide as he remembered who he was talking to. "Not you though, m'lady. You're a good sort. Must be real nice where you come from if you don't know about Exalted Marches."

She gave a sad shake of her head, wings rustling restlessly. "We had crusades? Those are just a lot of men in armor fighting a bunch of other men in armor about which religion is the truth."

Jim gave a startled laugh. "You get it then. They say Divine Justinia was about to call for an Exalted March against the mages. Not the ones like you. The ones with blood magic that summon demons. Apostates, you know." He wheeled the wheelbarrow back into the barn, nodding his head just once to the lumbering mass that was Blackwall.

Blackwall was a nice man. He carved little wood figurines and gave all kinds of useful tips for how Jane could use her staff and _not_ kill anyone doing it. Jane was of the opinion that if there was ever a picture needed for an encyclopedia entry about metaphors, Blackwall would fit in quite nicely under 'bear of a man.'

Caroline would have eaten him alive if she wasn't already married.

Jane chirped as the unlikely pair made their way back inside to muck out another stable. "But we're not having an Exalted March. And all the people who own these horses are _dead._ So... what are we doing with all these horses?"

Jim shrugged. "If they were Fereldan, we could have put them to work. The Orlesians would hate it if we did it to their pretty ponies though. "

She stopped and turned to look at him so fast that her eyes swam, the movement too fast for her magebane addled brain to keep up. She gagged on nothing, then rubbed her knuckle against the hard lump in her throat to clear the bubble of air that had gotten stuck. It took a moment for her to recollect herself, and Jim took his clipboard back while she coughed. "But they're not Orlesian horses now. They belong to the Inquisition. So... why can't we put them to work?"

Sterling's massive head popped out from his stall and Jim made an unmanly shriek that he would deny to his dying day. Jane simply laughed, reaching out her fingers to gently scratch her talons on that one particular spot on Sterling's muzzle that annoyed him the most. "Sterling would do it. Wouldn't you pull a cart for me, you handsome thing?"

Jim had to swallow a few times to get enough moisture in his mouth to all but beg Jane to reconsider. "M'lady? Not- Not that horse. We can try to ask about other ones. But _not that one_."

The best way to make Cullen Rutherford stop and take care of himself was to give him no other option. Jane had discovered that quite early into her strange working and protective relationship with the Commander. It was effective enough that she would probably capitalize on it for however long he took it upon himself to take an active role in her overall safety and wellbeing.

Jim brought them both lunch because, as he was so fondly terrified of pointing out, it was his actual job. And in the interest of making the newly minted aide de camp have less to do, it was only sensible for the interim stablemaster and commander to take their lunch in the same room. After all, she needed to choke down her afternoon dose of the faintly glowing liquid that had been left in her desk drawer by a very firm Mirena Adaar. Cullen made her take a few deep breaths that burned even while her tongue went numb and she giggled as the world swam in shades of chartreuse and cyan.

Every drop of Mirena's specially formulated medicine was precious, expensive, and tasted like the worst batch of backwoods moonshine. It even made her just as cross-eyed and made her try to scrape the taste from her tongue with her teeth. "Ew," she grimaced as she smacked her jaw and tried to focus on keeping the ground level.

Cullen gave her a rueful smile and handed her his tankard of long since cold coffee, courtesy of Josephine in an attempt to keep the Commander fully functional at all costs, to wash the poison down. He did her the courtesy of holding the bottom so that she didn't spill it all over herself in her wobbly attempt. "I'm afraid it's this or something far worse, my lady." He took his tankard back and grimaced as he knocked the rest back like it wasn't slightly congealed and left grains stuck in his teeth. "Maker's breath. Not as if this Antivan brew is any better.

Jane snorted hard enough to make herself sway and sat down hard on the strange camp stool Jim had set out for her comfort. Her wings rustled behind her, opening slightly as she tried to keep herself from wobbling. "Oh. Thank you?"

He did his best not to look down at her as she shifted restlessly, hiding his grin behind his hand. "You are welcome, Jane."

She smiled dopily up at him, the magebane already taking effect. Her skin tingled and she chewed at her lip, the slide of unfeeling flesh so strange she couldn't help but bite to see what it would take for her to feel.

This was not, apparently, acceptable.

Jane sucked her lip into her mouth with an audible pop that was loud enough to make Cullen frown. "Careful," he warned, his hand dropping down to the top of the desk in preparation to push himself to his feet. It was better to deal with Jane on both feet so he could brace himself for whatever came from her next. "We wouldn't want a repeat of last time."

Whatever had happened last time to put such heavy emotion in his voice?

The door to the stable's office opened with a bang as Jim backed himself into it, a tray carefully held steady. "M'lady, Commander. Sorry about the delay. There's a new rush of recruits that are clogging up the road."

Cullen snapped his eyes away from watching Jane and cleared his throat. "No matter." He got to his feet with a low grunt, the only sign of his age that Cullen would ever allow himself, clearing parchment from the desk into neat stacks to make space. "As long as it isn't hardtack and porridge, I'm sure it's fine."

Jim blanched under his hood. "Feed the lady _porridge?_ Are you daft?" His mouth moved faster than his brain, and he winced all the harder when the Commander turned the full force of his gaze upon his poor aide.

"Oh! Jim! The idea!" Jane snapped her fingers, a sad affair that left her wincing and shaking her hand after her talons pressed into her skin. "Lemme ask him."

Jim set the tray down on the worn wood with a thump as he desperately tried to hush the wobbling woman on her stool. "M'lady, I'm begging you. Anything else, I am your loyal servant. I'll swear to house Smythe and give you my firstborn. Just please, _please_ don't ask him for that."

Cullen's brows raised in his confusion as Jane flapped her hand at Jim. "It's fine," she slurred, dragging the shape of each syllable out with a birdy trill. "Cullen likes me. Qamar told him to."

The man in question blinked slower than the lion he was nicknamed after. "Close the door, recruit. Explain what Lady Smythe is talking about."

Jane flapped her wings and set off enough of a breeze to have Cullen absentmindedly slap his palm down on the desk to trap a few stacks before they blew away. "It's a good idea!"

Milk had more color than Jim's face when Cullen leaned forward. "Oh, Maker have mercy. Please don't kill me."

Cullen grit his teeth hard enough for a vein to throb on the side of his jaw. "Report, recruit." This wasn't Cullen, the nice man who gave Jane his coffee to wash down the taste of a witch's poison brew, asking a question. This was Commander Rutherford, head of the Inquisition's forces and a former templar Knight-Commander, giving a direct order. "From the beginning."

Jim snapped to attention hard enough to make his teeth click audibly in the quiet of the room. "Sir, yes sir!" He might not have been a member of any kind of military for very long but Jim had figured out the basics of how they functioned. When a man famous for his ability to lead a military force told you to tell him things, while he was actually your boss, you shut up and told him what he wanted to know.

Unless you were Jane, freshly uninhibited by her magebane dose. "Stop," she whined. "Don't be mean to my friend." Jane hiccuped and then waved like she wanted Cullen to come closer. "I gotta... I gotta ask you a question."

Cullen sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose before he turned his attention to his charge. "Ask, my lady."

"Can I... use the horses to pull stuff? Like, Sterling. He's a big horse. He could pull _so much_ stuff." She wobbled as she sat, the world still spinning before her eyes.

The man looked like someone had hit him between the eyes with a large stick. He opened his mouth and shut it, carefully thinking through his next words with all the training and wisdom he had gained over his career. "You... want to use the Inquisition's _warhorses_ for hauling."

Jim raised his hand slowly. "If it helps, sir, she mostly wants to use the chevalier's mounts."

Cullen barked out a laugh that was more broken than amused. "And Sterling."

The poor aide sighed and resigned himself to his headless fate. "Yes sir. And Sterling."

Some oaths were too restrictive by virtue of the sheer broadness to which they could be applied. The oath Cullen had made to Jane on that terrible and fateful day was one such oath. To speak the truth even when unpleasant and forever keep his word. But worst and best of all, if it was within his power, that which she willed was what would occur. A simple oath made to a broken creature by a man who owed her nothing but his apologies.

It wasn't a bad suggestion. There was ground to be broken, brush to be cleared, trees to be felled, and an army encampment to build. New recruits arrived by the dozens and the walls of Haven could not hold even a fraction of the force that Cullen was set to command.

But why, out of all the horses, did Jave have to ask for his?

The destrier had not always been his. Even if he had scrimped and saved every coin to his name, he could never have afforded the greatest of his mounts. Oh, his palfrey was and always would belong to Cullen. Hamish had been paid for by the painful sum of his years of service to the Order, the very same horse he had been given upon his promotion to Knight-Lieutenant. But Sterling?

Sterling had been Meredith's.

Meredith at the end of her days would only accept the best.

It was traditional for the former to leave something significant to their successor. Ser Wentworth had given Meredith his sword when he made her his successor. Cullen would have rather walked into the Waking Sea fully armed than touch the red lyrium infested blade. So, instead, he took Meredith's horse when he became the Knight-Commander. And he took Sterling with him, leaving his sword for his successor the way the Templar Order intended.

The same horse that Jane asked to use to haul freight and clear the land like he was nothing more than a farm horse.

And she looked at him, guileless as a baby bird, utterly innocent to the ramifications of what she was asking. To turn a mighty steed from being the pride of the Gallow's stablemaster into a common beast of burden. More importantly, she wanted to put _Meredith Stannard's_ horse to the plow as if he had never been a warhorse at all.

Cullen closed his eyes, mentally prayed to the Maker for patience, and sighed. "As you will, my lady."

Jane clapped like it was the best thing she had been told in her entire life. She cheered and threw her arms up so hard that she forgot how gravity worked and fell backward from her stool in a pile of feathers and flailing limbs. "Ow. I'm ok!" Jane raised a feathered arm triumphantly, waggling her taloned fingers to prove she was fine.

Cullen sometimes wondered if Jane was a test sent by the Maker to make up for a lifetime of sins. The Maker moved in mysterious ways. Of course, his personal test would come in the form of a shy magically altered abomination that had been all but dropped in his lap.

The last mage in his care had died to demons and blood mages.

He would not let this one go the same way.

Magebane made her mouth feel like cotton and her nose run down the back of her throat in a gross trickle that was just enough to tickle the space her tonsils should have been in. And, while she couldn't hear Caroline and didn't feel like she needed to slam herself into walls to get the _wrong_ out of her anymore, she didn't like the way it made her lose gaps of time while her body tried to adjust to the poison's effects.

Cullen wouldn't let her drink her poison witch's brew without someone around to watch her. On anyone else, the restrictions on her life would have chafed. But Jane had been dragged along by other people and told what to do with herself for so long that she was resigned to the feeling.

There was a difference between being numb, calm, and simply shoving reality in a little box to examine later when you had the time. Jane had taken the last option, the worst of them by far, and she remembered what it felt like to break into tiny pieces without Caroline there to scrape her back together and tell her what to do.

She wanted someone to tell her what she was supposed to do.

Instead, she had Sterling between her legs and a very tired and mentally broken Jim trying to explain to a man that _yes_ the Commander knew about this and _yes_ they were sure that Sterling could pull that log along the ground if the man would just let them hitch the horse to the chains.

This was better.

The horse snorted and she kept her seat on his wide back by the grace of her talons in his mane, her wings spread wide to flap on occasion, and the fact that Sterling was allowing this indignity to continue. Somewhere, someone had rustled up the straps and parts that comprised a plow harness meant for a draft horse with much less of a fine pedigree than Sterling had. And of course, Jane had strapped him in and gave him an Antivan sweet for his patience.

Jim wasn't arguing so much as he was gesticulating and being yelled at by a soldier who was the proper amount of grizzled to be in charge of the confused huddle of green recruits that had been trying to chop trees into smaller pieces to be dragged off by other horses. Horses that, to Jane's forced Dennet-trained eye, were better off pulling wagons in pairs than hauling chopped down trees.

Apple shook her mane, similarly trussed out in a plow harness and absolutely radiant with the idea that she could do something that wasn't just ignoring the horse equivalent of flirtatious overtures Sterling made when he walked past her stall. Jane refused to believe that her horse, because Apple was her horse now in all but deed, particularly wanted to make cute horse babies with Sterling.

She wasn't ready to take care of anyone or thing's babies.

Jane let Jim try to explain the logic behind using a horse worth more than any of them would make in a year or five for practical labor. He was better with confrontations than she was. Jane's answer to the problem was to simply nudge Sterling forward with her knees until he was in the position to be hitched to the fallen tree some of the recruits had just wrapped chains around. Jim was just the distraction as Jane slid from Sterling's back to hitch the horse to the log.

The recruits had the sense to hitch a smaller one to Apple and Jane clicked her tongue. "Come on, handsome. Let's put you to work."

Work, as it turned out, was exhausting.

Jane was sweaty, dusty, and muscles she didn't know existed ached with every breath she took. The recruits had been shamed by their sergeants, and entire squads competed to see who could move the logs faster: Sterling or good old fashioned manpower. 

She blotted the blood on her face away with the dirty bandages that someone had tied so tight on her arm. Her nose had started bleeding sometime around the afternoon, the poison in her veins finally tapping out the mana she hadn't stood still long enough to regenerate.

Magebane would be a terrible way to die.

Jim was a wealth of unexpected knowledge, casually whispering the meanings of words she didn't understand into her ear. And what he didn't know, the soldiers generally tended to know a secondhand story about from a cousin twice removed and three times disowned. They sat her on a crate while they heaved logs in six-man squads, hoisting the logs up like battering rams to create a woodpile out of a copse.

Lady Jeanmarie drove herself to help the Inquisition so hard she burned herself out in the attempt. Poor dove. Finally out of her gilded cage across the Wilds and determined to help set the world right and the Breach closed. The soldiers asked her to sing for them to keep their spirits high and her body rested. And the lady laughed.

"I don't know any songs you'll like," she smiled. "And I sound like someone torturing a cat." The blood on her face dried and she scraped off flakes of it with the tips of her talons.

These were her people: the normal ones that blended into the background noise, the insignificant masses that weren't so much beautiful as they were kind. They were the Dennets and Elainas, Mother Giselles and Jims. The unimportant people who would never have their names listed as the main characters of any story. So she asked them for stories. Their stories, the true ones and the folk ones, because those stories were her stories now.

They clear the copse much faster with two horses to pull out stumps and clear away chopped down trees.

But there would be more recruits each day. More people coming to help close the thing glowing a sick green on the horizon that made her head throb every time she looked at it. Mouths attached to warm bodies that Cullen and Qamar had whispered oh so quietly in the dark where no one could hear but her that they wouldn't be able to afford to feed.

But the sun dipped lower and lower, the work called to a halt as tents began to be pitched on the now empty ground. Fires made out of chopped up stumps and invitations given for her to share a corner of their fires.

But there was the magebane to take still. Three times a day, every day, glowing blue liquid poison administered by Cullen. And she would take it until she was better, safer, less of a danger to herself and others. More fragments of time would slip through her fingers like all of her hopes and dreams.

The careful way Cullen handed it over and the sadness in his eyes was enough for her to know the truth she didn't dare ask.

Jane would drink it until the day she died.

And so she nudged Sterling back to the barn with the balls of her mutated feet. Back to his stall for a well-deserved rest, and back to her paperwork and poison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [There's a Discord.](https://discord.gg/THDKVDhzga)
> 
> [There's a Pinterest.](https://www.pinterest.com/mirrordaltokki/canary/)
> 
> [There's a Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Ch2wTvIT0nNZuv727YkJo)
> 
> For everything else, there's a comment section below.


	14. Tale-Bearers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ain’t no spoilers here, just sweet and delicious plot.
> 
> “Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.”  
> ― Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A woman was standing in her office. Dennet's office, given to her for an interim, taken over by Cullen as he stood vigil over her. The same Cullen who was conspicuously absent from his usual seat, the paperwork he labored over as missing in action as he was. Instead, the desk now held two buckets: one full of slightly steaming water and the other full of a myriad of bottles, brushes, and cloths.

Leliana, the Spymaster of the Inquisition, should have logically had nothing physically to do with Jane. They were in entirely different branches of the Inquisition, and the only interactions they had before this moment were the brief glimpse into the woman's razor-sharp tongue and wit on that fateful day before the gates. Worse still, the sun had already fallen and night had begun to blanket Haven with its quiet chill, leaving Jane with the impression that this was not going to be some pleasant social call.

The woman smiled and Jane shivered.

"Hello, mon petit oiseau." She blinked, slow like a cat before a canary that was trying to convince the bird that it wasn't about to be gobbled up in one bite. Leliana laughed at Jane's distress, a pretty sound that didn't match the sharp edges of the knives Jane knew she wore everywhere impossible on her body. "Oh, do not look at me so. I come in peace and friendship, not to assassinate you in your sleep."

This was not, as Leliana probably hoped, reassuring in the slightest.

Instead, it made Jane pale beneath her recently gained farmer's tan and sun-induced freckles. She gave a distressed peep that made Leliana frown and Jane even more terrified of what was to come. The wooden bucket on the table with all of its parts and pieces took on a distinctly ominous vibe that made Jane audibly gulp.

"Oh come now. Is it so hard to believe someone wishes you well?"

That was quite possibly the dumbest question Jane had ever been asked. Everyone here, nearly everyone, had a hand in some misfortune that had befallen her. The only ones she trusted here were Varric, Qamar, and the mysterious majesty that was Mirena Adaar. "Yes."

Leliana gave her a wicked grin. "Then let me defy your expectations, mon petit. It's past time someone here appreciated you for what you are."

"I... don't understand." She blinked, slow as molasses, brain working on overdrive and coming up empty.

The other woman reached out a hand and ran gentle fingers through the arch of a wing that Jane was too slow to whip out of her reach. "Mon petit, did you know that you are beautiful?"

Jane was covered in dust, sweat, grass, horse spit, and more questionable substances than she knew the names of. She hadn't taken a shower in weeks and the closest to a bath that she had enjoyed was courtesy of a series of buckets poured over her head and a chunk of horse soap scrubbed across her body. Her hair had been braided, destroyed, brushed in the dark, drenched, and then rebraided without a single consideration to her appearance but for functionality instead. No one could find a single stitch of clothing that would allow her to comfortably stretch her wings and all she had to cover her shame was a collection of robes with the backs cut out and hems left slightly ragged.

Her mother would have screamed if she saw her.

Jane's eyebrows all but crawled up her face as she stared at Leliana, too shocked by the absolute madness that left Leliana's mouth to do much more than freeze on the spot. She gave a distressed cheep that made the woman laugh.

"Josie is going to love you." Leliana stepped closer, hemming Jane in and slowly pushing her towards the desk. "You blush so pretty when someone tells you the truth. Oh, mon petit, you are a delight. How rude of Cullen to keep you all to himself." She ran a finger down Jane's cheek with a wicked smile. "But we shall have to fix that, won't we?"

There was nothing at any point in Jane's life that prepared her for the undivided attention of what was, objectively, an attractive woman that was close enough for Jane to smell her perfume. She opened her mouth and closed it with a click as words escaped her. This was more Caroline's area of expertise and normally her friend would have swept in and swept back out with Leliana caught in her tailwind.

But Caroline wasn't here.

Instead, Jane was forced to snap her wings up and open to avoid pinching them painfully on the edge of the desk as Leliana pressed closer and closer. This only served to make Leliana even more delighted if the fingers tracing her feathers were any kind of litmus.

"There. Beautiful, and mon petit oiseau doesn't even know how many hearts she could break with a smile." She clicked her tongue as she rubbed dirt from the edges of Jane's feathers. "We cannot leave you like this. A swan should not look like a pigeon."

Jane was fine with looking like a pigeon if it meant that unholy gleam in Leliana's eyes would look anywhere but at her. That was the same kind of look Caroline had given her when she had declared that Jane wasn't going to go to prom looking like a mouse. The same look that heralded the coming of single hairs plucked out of her eyebrows and brushes swiped across her face in some ritual witchcraft that made Jane look like someone completely different when Caroline was done.

No, Jane knew that look. And Jane did not like that look.

Leliana smiled and Jane feared for her immortal soul. "Did you think we would let you hide with the horses forever? No, Jane. We will make a lady of you. The kind of lady who inspires ballads and poetry and makes men's hearts flutter when she smiles. You are part of the Inquisition, and the Herald of Andraste has claimed you as his own." The spymaster tapped the tip of Jane's beaky little nose and laughed. "Let's show them all what you're worth."

Jane was in danger.

Of course, Leliana did not accept anything less than the best. What Jane brought to the Inquisition was very much not her best, and Leliana was more than happy to correct this deficiency. It turned out that the bucket she had brought was full of brushes, cloths, and bottles galore. Cleanser, oils, little pots of powder, and tiny little files to trim down bird talons.

The spymaster of the Inquisition was delighted at the prospect of a human-shaped bird. While Jane was arguably adorable in Leliana's nug-loving eyes, she was more enraptured by the potential Jane represented. Intelligence networks rose and fell on the speed and reliability of their information. Cyphers, well-bred ravens, devoted agents, bards, and copious amounts of blackmail made the Inquisition a force to be feared.

But to have a single entity capable of carrying and memorizing cyphered messages to be flown across the countryside?

Leliana loved Jane.

Leliana was willing to do whatever it took to keep Jane invested in the Inquisition.

Leliana would happily brush Jane's wings for hours until the grey feathers shone in the sunlight. But first, she needed to get Jane clean enough for Leliana and Josephine to work their impossible magic.

There was no bucket or bathtub big enough to fit Jane and her extremities comfortably. So there was no other choice but to drag Jane to the one place that Leliana could strip Jane down and scrub her until her skin glowed pink and not a single drop of horse saliva remained ingrained in her hair.

Every army worth its name attracted followers. From the women and men who plied the oldest trade in history to the families of career soldiers, no army would be complete without the unmentioned souls that trailed along in its wake. Bakers, blacksmiths, cobblers, grocers, merchants, and tinkers aplenty hitched their futures to the ebb and flow of war across empires and kingdoms.

Many a professional mercenary outfit considered the army camp to be the lap of luxury for the sheer commodities available at any given hour.

But Leliana did not bring Jane to the harlots or soldiers. No, instead she brushed past linens hung out to dry in wintery sunlight and ducked through laundry lines that had sprung up nearly overnight. They headed to heat that turned the nearly eternal permafrost to soft dirt beneath their feet. There was enough steam in the air to clear Jane's lungs if she breathed in deep and deeper still, and Leliana smiled at Jane's content sigh.

"One moment, mon petit."

Jane didn't mind Leliana disappearing to giggle in strange French with a cluster of women whose shapes she could only see through shadowy warps in the fluttering fabric. Whatever this place was, it smelled like soap and fresh laundry, and Jane loved it. She threw her head back and simply listened to the sound of the camp bustling around her.

Leliana chattered away, then ducked back out from behind a sheet. "Come along. The good women here have cleared you a basin."

The confused cheep was as second nature to Jane by now as breathing. But she followed along in Leliana's wake like a bedraggled duckling anyway, trusting to the last. And, as Caroline had trained her so well to do what felt like a lifetime ago, Jane ignored the murmurs and rumors that swirled around the unlikely pair. The bird lady and the spymaster together in the camp's laundry? A scandal to say the least.

And that was before Leliana made Jane strip down and shiver in front of a wide wooden barrel that was large enough to be considered a tub but with sides so short that it couldn't be called anything other than a basin. The washwoman marveled before Leliana reached up and around to pull a sheet across its line... delaying just long enough for the women to see the natural tapering of feathers to smooth skin on Jane's back. The tittering multiplied tenfold and Leliana clapped her hands to get Jane's attention before she blushed herself into an early grave.

"Chop, chop! In you go!" The steaming water would have been less terrifying without Leliana's grin and debatably helpful shove. When the bucket of equally steaming water was dumped over her head and made her snort out droplets, all Jane did was turn her head to look at the strange new woman who had done it. She looked familiar, the twist of her smug lips a near match for another dark-skinned woman who filled Jane with terror. The slight lilting lisp in her voice almost welcomed Jane to make an awful joke at her expense, but the unholy gleam in her eyes warned that it would be the last thing Jane did. "Manman was right. You look a right fright. Did the whole lot of them really let you walk out the door looking like that?"

Leliana snorted as she passed over another bucket of what was soon to be many. The washerwomen had a rather ingenious system, made of massive kettles and wooden barrels, that they used to wash and boil as much laundry as was physically possible. It was this washing system that Leliana had paid perfectly good coin to borrow. The helpful addition of the woman who gleefully volunteered to drown Jane in the name of turning a pig's ear into a silk purse was simply an unexpected bonus. "Did you expect our Commander to notice?"

The other woman clicked her tongue against her teeth. The wooden comb in her hand boded ill for the tender skin of Jane's scalp, but at least she wasn't trying to drown Jane. "He's a man. I'd be surprised if he realized those are tits and not bee stings."

If someone could come and either put Jane out of her misery or knock her over the head hard enough that she didn't remember this moment when she woke up, that would be just fine with her. She flushed, her wings rustling restlessly even as the woman cackled. "Um... why?"

"How do you say it? He is... an idiot." The woman shrugged as she pushed Jane's shoulders so she would kneel as comfortably as possible while the woman tugged the comb through the riot Jane's hair had become. Slender fingers the color of well-maintained saddle leather slipped through Jane's hair, gentle but insistent at removing the knots and snarls. "Manman will set him right. She does that for everyone."

Leliana swirled a brush in the hot water and began the arduous task of fixing the bedraggled disaster that was Jane's wings. "As long as your mother doesn't kill him. We need him."

Jane felt like a passenger in her own body as the two women moved her about as they pleased in their quest to make Jane into something resembling a lady. Being friends with Caroline since they were both knee-high to a grasshopper had made Jane painfully aware that her sense of style so awful that it was forever at the mercy of wiser and more fashionable people. She surrendered to their care and simply rocked to and fro in a strangely meditative ritual that had been enacted since time immemorial, one that had begun when one creature looked at another and was offended at what they looked like.

The water had gone from greyish brown to clear and the sun had crept its way down the horizon before the other two women considered Jane to be properly clean and presentable. Her ragged robe had been replaced by a much cleaner cut garment, the heavy wool just as heavy on her shoulders. It wasn't a beautiful thing created from a pattern just for Jane, or even some mass-produced tried and true pattern to fit an assumed section of the world, but it was a marked level better than what Ser had forced on her. Her skin was covered, her wings were clean, her hair was braided better than it had ever been, and Leliana nodded in approval.

"You'll do quite nicely." Leliana nodded, self-satisfaction plain as day in her smile. It was a liar's smile, sharp as a knife and just as likely to cut her as anyone else, that boded ill for what anonymity Jane thought she had. "A change of clothes and you finally look like what you are."

The other woman snorted. "Orlesians. Can't just say what they mean." She flicked her ponytail of tiny impossible braids over her shoulder with the tip of her fingers before she took a step back. "No wonder you get along with Manman."

Manman was apparently a strange, while powerful, friend to have and even Leliana seemed to know it. "Please. That Witch wishes she was Orlesian. As if I would count on a swamp dweller for fashion advice."

Smiling implied that the baring of teeth was meant to show joy, harmlessness, or generally any kind of sentiment resembling friendliness. The flash of teeth the strange woman gave meant none of those things. Instead, it was as if the woman was of the opinion that she would rather rip out throats with her teeth than play nicely with others. "Your shoes still look ridiculous."

Leliana barked a laugh. "Coming from a Lord of Fortune? That's quite rich indeed."

The strange woman looked down at her clothes in a show of twists and raised arms. "Oh my. I would never have noticed if not for your divine wisdom. Please, tell us, Sister Leliana. What fashionable guidance would the Chantry like us to follow?"

Jane dearly hoped that whatever she would be forced to wear would look nothing like what this woman loved so much. Scarves and ribbons in dozens of colors, bits of brocade sewn onto bodice panels, gold coins strung from the sash across her hips, and flashes of jewels braided into her hair... the woman looked like she had walked out of a circus performance and was either about to breathe fire or juggle something impossible. Her clothing was bright, loud, jingled every time she moved, and somehow still dry as a bone despite the long bathing and grooming experience Jane refused to ever speak of again.

Her scarves jingled as she threw her arms around Jane's shoulders. "Poor bird doesn't need robes and incense burners to be pretty."

"Are you about to say personality matters? Only for so long.” Leliana turned and schooled her face blank. “But this... this pleasant diversion isn’t why you are here. Is it, Sasha?”

“To business then. I heard a rather... curious story on my way here. A fanciful thing, one that's full telling I would rather hear from the source.” Sasha the Lord of Fortune, if Jane understood Leliana correctly, was perfectly content with using the top of Jane’s head as a chin rest. Jane was starved enough for friendly attention that she let the woman hug her from behind and play with the end of her thick braid.

Leliana inclined her head, ever so gracious. “Ask then.”

“Where is my father? And, more importantly, where are you keeping my baby sister?”

Cullen didn’t fetch Jane from the camp’s laundry so much as he was informed that Jane was having a lady's day and failed to understand the implications of the phrase. His familiar figure silhouetted against the lines of linens and clothing, the last bits of sunlight throwing his relief across the ground. Jane had never been happier to see another human being in her life, especially after she had all but had her skin scoured from her body with what felt like sand and her brain irreparably damaged by the thought that in some parts of the world, somehow Qamar had become her father.

"My lady?" Cullen blinked in his confusion, freezing in place with a hand above his head to keep a sheet from flopping into his face.

"Oh thank God," she breathed, her freshly bandaged arm reaching out for him like a drowning man did a raft. "Save me," Jane whispered. The man was understandably confused, but Jane had even less desire to be near these two women for any longer than she absolutely had to.

Sasha thought she had a new sister because the rumors around the Inquisition were such that Qamar, her father, had a new ward. As Qamar would sooner chew his arm off than cheat on his wife, clearly this meant that Mirena had had a baby while Sasha was away. It was perfectly reasonable and sound judgement. Or, it would have been if Mirena had actually been pregnant and an actually baby was involved.

Jane was not anyone’s sister. Her parents were back home with all of her cousins, aunts, and uncles. She had no family to speak of anywhere remotely near Haven. And yet... yet her heart swelled at the thought of a family that wanted her so much they fought wars for her. The Adaars fought wars and were good at it, if their commission and status as a mercenary company was any kind of indicator. Jane quietly wondered what it would be like.

And then she woke up from that ridiculous idea. People didn’t just adopt other grown adults. What Qamar saw when he looked at her was not an adult. He saw his daughter, Sasha, writ large over a tragedy that Jane had just barely begun to wrap her head around. And he declared her his ward, not his daughter. An involuntary adult ward of what was clearly the closest thing to a government organization around. In short, Qamar thought she was so incompetent that he appointed himself the de facto ruler of her life. She lived where he deemed fit, spent what money she earned in ways he deemed fit, and decided what was best for her in all facets of her life. Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to work.

If anything, Qamar had declared himself as the organization to be appeased and made Cullen her keeper instead.

Jane wasn’t particularly offended at that. Cullen was a kind man who seemed to legitimately want to see her happy, healthy, and as free from the magic that gripped icy fingers in her gut as possible. He wanted her to control the flow of her own destiny and served only as the hands to guide her to that path.

She hoped.

Cullen gulped, his eyes flicking over Jane’s shoulder just in time to see the dark skinned young woman throw her arm over Jane’s shoulders and pull her close. “Ah. I see.”

Sasha grinned against the tips of Jane’s ears, disturbing the feathers there with her breath. “Hello Cully-wully. Did Manman set you free to fetch my dear new little sister?” Something soured between them and Sasha dug the knife in on the all but palpable tension. “What do you call her? Ah, yes. Lady Jeanmarie.”

There was no saving Jane now and she knew it. “It’s... it’s fine. I’ll just... stay.”

Sasha scoffed even as Cullen gave a labored sigh. “Is that your will, my lady?”

Jane paused. She did not particularly want to stay, but staying would be less effort in the long run and lead to far fewer fights with people she had just met. “I-,” her mouth opened and closed again with a single click of her teeth.

“Cullen. How delightful to see you out of your office. Come, walk with me. There is a curious thing that my agents have brought me word of that may be of some interest to you.” She inclined her head gracefully to Jane with a knife sharp smile. “I beg your Ladyship’s indulgence. I shall return your knight to you soon.”

She could feel the blush blooming across her face as well as she could the shaking of Sasha’s waist as she tried so hard not to bark out an inopportune laugh. “Oh... Uh... that’s fine?” Her squeaked words only served to make Sasha snort directly into her ear.

Leliana shooed them off with a flap of her hands. “Now, Cullen. Tell me something. What do you know about the Litany of Adralla?”

Sasha all but dragged Jane up the path from the army’s encampment to the stables. Neither woman particularly wanted to be around Leliana when she was in a mood to be sneaky and they both very much wanted to get their dinner before all the good parts of whatever meager thing that was available were all scooped up. A small part of Jane wanted to be kind and tell the other woman that Jim would probably have her dinner already waiting for her on her desk, and that he usually brought enough for Cullen as well.

But there was no way either of them would be in time for that. Not when the gates were all but clogged with tired and worn figures who seemed more capable of murdering Jane with their eyes closed than over half the people that swore to the Inquisition. They reminded Jane of Mirena and her horned followers: all metal and leather armor with little room for foolishness. This group was more diverse than the Adaar’s company but promised to be just as lethal.

Sasha pulled them to a stop just before the edge of the crowd, hissing and batting at Jane’s wings. “Close them, close them!” Jane had subconsciously tried to flap and puff herself up like a distressed owl in the face of so many new faces. “No one needs that.”

A large horned man was rather politely introducing himself to the poor guardsman and the familiar quivering mess that was Jim. “-and I’m The Iron Bull.” He seemed to be nearing the end of his introduction, and Sasha sucked in a breath at his name.

Jane tried to shrink into herself and twitch her chin in just the right configuration to make Jim notice her. His eyes widened, and the two mousey souls began a complicated conversation with their eyebrows about the overall safety of this group of people.

Jim thought they were fine. Terrifying, but fine.

Jane was of the opinion that discretion was the better part of valor, and running for the hills like their lives depended on it was a completely wonderful plan.

The Iron Bull was massive, but he wasn't the one that Sasha focused on like a bloodhound with a scent. "Well, I'll be damned. Cremisius Aclassi and the cream of the Bull's Chargers' crop. You know... his boss hit on Manman once. She dumped him in a swamp." She looked ready to either throw her knives at the armored man or jump his bones for a good time. Every once in a while she would let her eyes flick to the massive grey-skinned man who didn't understand the concept of a shirt and had horns that looked like they belonged on a longhorn Texan bull. Jane couldn't quite tell what Sasha really wanted, the manic grin on the other woman's face a signal that something truly uncomfortable was about to occur.

"I bet I could take him."

The Iron Bull looked over several heads and gave a sick parody of a grin. Of course he had heard Sasha. It wasn't like the woman had tried to keep quiet. "That an offer, little Adaar?" And then he wiggled the eyebrows on his craggy face and Jane felt a little part of her she didn't know existed die an unlamented and unnamed death.

Jane patted Sasha's back sympathetically as the woman gagged on air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [There's a Discord.](https://discord.gg/THDKVDhzga)
> 
> [There's a Pinterest.](https://www.pinterest.com/mirrordaltokki/canary/)
> 
> [There's a Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Ch2wTvIT0nNZuv727YkJo)
> 
> For everything else, there's a comment section below.


	15. A Lady's Imagination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bad news people. I have run out of backlog. It was inevitable, but we had a good run. Technically I ran out of backlog in the beginning of December, but we persevered.
> 
> The section coming up next is complex enough that I cannot just smash out a chapter a week and have it make sense. Thus, this will be the last chapter until the end of February.
> 
> Canary will be resumed on March 1.
> 
> “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”  
> ― Jane Austen

If anyone had ever told Jane that she would be involved in a convoluted plot to figure out whether a man who looked like a gargoyle crossed with a demon wanted to destroy the very organization she had inadvertently become a part of, she probably would have quietly asked if they were feeling ok. But here she was, flexing her eyebrows in ever-complicated configurations to try and converse with an equally confused man across a crowded tavern.

Jim was a good man. A sensible man - who looked upon the madness that was their lives now, nodded grimly at Jane, and cracked open a bottle of what she suspected was the local brew of moonshine. If it wasn't for the fact that there were so many people in the tavern that seemed not to understand that Jane was an honest to goodness adult, she probably would have quietly offered Jim her cup to join him in blissful inebriation.

Sometimes, very rarely, the world was so ass-backwards that the only recourse available to a normal person was to simply retreat and drink until the morning, when the world would, hopefully, make sense again.

This was their lot as the only sane people in the churning madness that was the Inquisition. Two rocks in a tumultuous sea that churned around them in ever-larger waves, threatening to drown them at every turn. Two sailors bailing water from a boat with so many holes that the craft might sink at any moment.

Jane sipped at her ale and attempted to avoid any and all eye contact with the crag faced man.

It did not work.

A mug slid its way in front of her, something bitter and brown sloshing over the sides as its owner settled across the table from her. "Well, I'll be damned. Curly let you out for the night?"

Jane liked Varric, and she liked to think that, after so long at Haven, the feeling was mutual. He was one of the few people who didn't flinch at the sight of her talons or the way her wings fluttered when she was restless.

Varric had watched her choke down her lunch dose of magebane with a grimace and a sip of the strongest alcohol she had ever had the displeasure of putting in her body. After, when she had gone to supervise more of the forest clearing and lend a horse when needed, he had apparently yelled at Cullen for thirty minutes straight. Jim was very good at passing on the latest gossip, so she didn't doubt him in the slightest. Varric liked her. And Varric cared.

That meant something here.

She gave him a wobbly smile as she tore her eyes away from Jim and ended the conversation with a lift of a brow and a jerk of her head. Later; they'd talk about it later. Now, she simply gave a rueful laugh. "He had work to do."

"Uh-huh." Varric was also apparently a master at conversing with his eyebrows. The cant of his own fluffy ones said that he was displeased and wanted to know more, then they wiggled into a suggestion. "Enough work to leave your ladyship behind? Sounds pretty convenient, Magnolia."

Jane snorted before she could stop herself. "Mirena said he could either come or..." She leaned in a fraction, pitched her voice down low. "He could show up on time or she could send Qamar his balls by courier."

Varric's laugh was enough to make the little exaggeration worth it.

After all, if you couldn't tell bad jokes with friends, what was the point?

Staff training put bruises on her bruises. And, as it turned out, Sasha was the devil incarnate when it came to making sure that Jane knew what she was doing with the staff Solas had given her before he left with Qamar. The Lord of Fortune had nominated herself after the one and only time anyone else had tried to take on the burden of Jane's martial education, and was met with the strangest abject failure possible. Jane could spin a staff in one hand, toss it in the air, and all but dance with it. She was determined, and surprisingly more graceful than her shy demeanor belied. But there was just one problem that no one could seem to overcome.

The minute anyone tried to attack her: Jane ran.

She didn't block. Didn't remember a single thing she had been taught. She simply clutched her staff to her chest and  _ ran. _

Sometimes she tripped and skinned her knees or palms on the ground. Other times, she yelped in her strange double toned voice before she fell on her backside. But mostly, Jane ran.

Sasha had heard about Jane's reaction to the terror demon but couldn't manage to make the other woman  _ scream _ like she meant it. The closest she could manage was one particular high pitched shriek that lasted long enough to make Sasha's head throb and Jane's nose bleed.

But it wasn't that ethereal wail that rippled across the Veil and turned the world into a wintery hellscape.

They always practiced right before lunch, so Jane wouldn't vomit up her meal in her panic, and Blackwall could yell steady encouragement from his spot by the barn doors. It was a good plan, in theory, that failed in its execution simply because every person who agreed Jane needed to learn how to defend herself and control her magic had forgotten a few very basic concepts:

Jane did not want to fight.

And she knew perfectly well that none of them would force her to.

So Sasha cried in frustration every time Jane turned literal tail and fled, howling to the sky that this wasn't the point of the exercise.

Blackwall simply shrugged and let Jane quiver behind him like a frightened lamb every time she ran. After all, knowing when to retreat and when to stand your ground was a key part of learning how to fight.

Magebane was a pretty poison. There was no cure for magebane. It glittered blue and white in a plain glass bottle and smelled faintly like nail polish remover when it was unstoppered. And when Cullen poured it into the little cup, Jane smiled reassuringly. All medicine was poison after all.

Three times a day, every day, until the day she died.

Cullen always kept her close after she drank her dose down, and handed her a sweet from Josephine to mask the taste of it as it settled past the lump in her throat. He never said exactly why, but every mealtime was spent in his company or with Jim. "My lady."

"I know." She tipped the cup back and tasted her death in each carefully husbanded drop. Jane handed the cup back with a sigh and sat where Cullen could see her, just in time to add another empty gap to her life.

But he looked at her now with some shred of hope in his eyes, a faint glimmer that hadn't been there before his talk with Leliana into the wee hours of the morning. "We will find the solution, Jane - you have my word."

The last thing she remembered was the way smiling at him felt like sunlight in her veins and how her tongue curled around her sigh. "I trust you."

Magebane was a pretty poison. There was no cure for magebane.

Jane was not popular. Well, she was popular in the sense that her best friend was popular and Jane was a convenient gateway to information about Caroline. If there was anything Jane had learned over the years, it was how to shut her mouth and keep it shut. Some information was privileged to a limited few and Jane had learned and lived that from an early age.

The Iron Bull was not part of the privileged few.

He was, in fact, specifically not a member of the privileged few. Jane had been told, rather bluntly by a cranky Mirena, upon the delivery of her next batch of magebane, not to tell the qunari who she was or where she came from. As far as he was concerned, Jane was just a very lost soul who had volunteered her services out of a sense of compassion so strong that it hadn’t wavered in the face of even the strictest and cruelest of Templars.

The qunari had volunteered to help in the stables. In doing so, he had made himself into a nuisance that Jane was uniquely equipped for. She might have the spinal fortitude of a limp noodle, but she knew how to politely not talk about things that strangers had no business knowing about.

“So, I hear you’re not from around here,” he asked.

“Thank you for your help,” she deflected with all the good Southern grace she could manage.

All the manners in the world wouldn’t work on The Iron Bull. If anything, every careful deflection or moment of being purposefully ignored only seemed to make him more interested in Jane. She hated the attention but appreciated that he at least helped with all the necessary heavy lifting that neither Jane nor Jim could manage. It was an odd situation to be in for Jane.

“Uh-huh. You’re welcome.” He didn’t even have the decency to grunt at the weight slung over his shoulder, and simply carried the saddle around like it weighed no more than a feather. “You know, for a lady, you don’t seem all that proud.”

Jane froze. It was fine when Cullen or Jim called her their lady because they didn’t treat her like one. Most of the time she could even get them to call her just Jane instead of Jeanmarie, neatly sidestepping the lie that was her life now. Even the stable hands and soldiers had taken to ignoring the full fake name when she asked oh so politely. Lady Jane was fine, and she really didn’t need any of this Lady Jeanmarie Smythe of lands afar and unknown nonsense that Josephine and Leliana had spread about the countryside in a dizzying swirl of whispers and gossip.

But when The Iron Bull said she wasn’t a good lady, it sounded like an insult. Like she had turned her back on her family and homeland, eschewing the grace and traditions of untold generations of bird-cursed Smythes before her. The kind of insult that, if every obsessive reimmersion into Pride and Prejudice had correctly taught her, a proper lady would have vehemently protested.

The smug little crinkles at the corners of his eyes were enough to tell her that she had made a grave and horribly miscalculated mistake. His idle toss of the saddle onto a proper rack and subsequent leaning on the stall door across from it confirmed it. This was a conversation she wouldn’t be escaping from, mostly because she couldn’t escape at all. “Nothing? Look, I’m not here to hurt you. That battle-ax would fire me if I did, and no one wants that.”

Jane did. Jane wanted that. But nobody cared about what Jane wanted. Except maybe Cullen, but he had been ordered to care and thus probably didn’t count. Varric? He was almost militant about Jane having some semblance of choice. Kind of like having that one weird cousin at the family reunion who showed up in the latest designer clothes and aggressively talked loudly and often about how kids should make their own bad decisions simply because it made them happy.

Since Varric did not seem to be the sort of person who associated with the criminal underbelly of society, it was probably safe to say that Varric was not like her neighbor Maria’s third cousin twice removed, and Varric was thus incapable of making The Iron Bull sleep with the fishes.

“I’ll puzzle you out eventually, little bird. You might as well save yourself the trouble of resisting - unless you’re into that. Wouldn’t have called it, but I’ve been surprised before.” He grinned, and Jane felt dirty by association. “If you  _ are _ into that, well. Look me up sometime.”

Jane gagged. “I bet you have an STD.” She couldn’t stop herself, and clapped a shameful hand over her mouth as her cheeks burned.

The Iron Bull only laughed. “See, you’ve got a spine after all.” He pushed himself off the wall with a grunt. “Remember that and you’ll do fine.”

The soldiers of the Inquisition were wonderful people who welcomed all the help Jane could give them. This was why Jane personally rode Apple, with Sterling blissfully walking behind them on a lead, to the least developed part of the encampment. Here she reported to the first group of soldiers wise enough to have passed on a message that they could use a bit of equine assistance.

Most of them were extremely uncomfortable with the concept of using what amounted to a Ferrari sports car to haul lumber and break the frozen earth in order to make room and reasonable accommodations for the unending stream of new recruits.

The rest of them, the smart ones according to Jim, simply accepted that a high and mighty noble considered their accommodations or lack thereof to somehow be her highest concern. Those were the ones who filled in requisition requests and passed them along like normal people did love letters. The sergeants hid their carefully worded pleas between stacks of training results and normal requests for better equipment for their new troops. And then Cullen passed each one along; or rather, Jim read each one out loud as Jane cinched belts and pointed volunteers to stalls, with instructions on which horse would do best at hauling or breaking the earth.

In this, surprisingly, Jane excelled. It was no different from directing a new kind of cheer routine from the scrawled, egotistical directions of whichever strange soul Caroline had borrowed from the drama club this time. Only  _ this  _ time it meant something to someone she had promised to help, and this time it mattered if she messed it up.

For some reason, Jane took like a duck to water to the militant coordination of what most had come to consider  _ her _ horses and  _ her _ forces to where  _ Cullen’s _ forces could use them best. In it, she found a strange sort of peace. Here they needed her. Not like Caroline had;  _ truly _ needed her. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t read a single word and all of her directions had to be given and received verbally. She had Jim to fix that.

And then she had Karl to write it down, and Karl had Jenny to run his messages. Jenny brought her brother to ride a particularly stubborn horse where Jane had told Karl to send him. But Karl reported to Jim, so Jane told Jim to tell Karl that Jenny needed to run to her brother and take a fancy Orlesian warhorse to the far east side of Haven, to be hitched to a plow that Jane had told Jim to have Lucas bring from the farm that Cullen had told Jane he had grown up near, and thus wouldn’t mind them borrowing the equipment so long as they had the coin to pay for it.

Jane and her tangle of ducklings did not have the coin to pay for any of it.

Jane did, however, have Varric laughing in the corner of what was rapidly becoming her office. If you could call three barrels, a plank of wood, and six clerks clustered in front of the barn an office. It was like playing chess: best done in her head and three moves in advance to keep anyone from wearing themselves thin. Jim would write a slip out after Jane had trickled her orders through her little staff, and Varric would sign it with a particularly vindictive flourish.

“Gardenia, my purse is yours.”

Jane did not know what that meant. But she did know that somehow, somewhere, she had picked up a weird uncle who indulged her hobbies and bought her horses instead of dresses. “Thank you?”

Varric grinned. “Don’t mention it. Really, don’t mention it. The Seeker would kill me if she knew.”

“Uh… ok?” Smile and nod, just smile and nod, and then no one would know that you had no idea what was happening in your life. She didn’t need to understand the particulars.

But these were her horses now. Jim had a stack of signed and sealed parchments covered in fancy gold writing that each said a variant of the same thing:

_ Thank you Lady Smythe for your services, _

_ As requested, the following horse belongs to you now. _

_ Please consider marrying into our family so we can get more money and privilege. Et cetera et cetera, a creepy portrait of our most suitable heir is enclosed within. _

Except in French, or Orlesian as they called it here, and probably in more detail than Varric or Jim wanted to explain. She’d tried to get Cullen to read one out loud to her, but he had taken one look at the fanciest letter she had found, turned a funny shade of puce, and told her to ask Varric about it when she was older. The funniest part was that Jane hadn’t requested anything at all, but now she was the proud and confused owner of some thirty-odd destriers and palfreys.

Varric looked incredibly smug about it.

It solved the question quite neatly of what to do with a score of dead chevalier’s mounts. She didn’t need to ask permission to use the dead’s horses, because their noble benefactors had seen fit to respond in the positive to Jane’s request for ownership rights. She’d never requested those, but she’d take them now she had them. At least now she wouldn’t have to worry about how to return all the horses, because they were hers.

More letters arrived daily and Jane’s herd grew.

Jim clasped her on the shoulders at one point and stared straight into his lady’s eyes without blinking. “Please, milady. I beg you. Just this one thing. Please, do not ask if you can have Sterling.”

“Why not? He’s very helpful.”

Her staff made a collective sound like they had all forgotten how to breathe. Jim rallied against her blank look with as much dignity as he could manage, the staff’s expectations buoying him through. He spoke for them because he was the only one that knew exactly how Lady Jeanmarie functioned as a person. “You just can’t.”

She blinked slowly. “But he’s bored. And this way he’ll have a home.”

“Milady, I will literally give you my children in service to your house. All of us will give you our children. Just please,  _ not that horse.  _ If you love any of us, let Sterling go.” Jim was close to crying, manfully at least.

And then Varric piped up. “I’m sure Gardenia could put in a good bid.”

Jim all but frothed at the mouth as he turned his head to look back at Varric. “Please. Do not encourage her ladyship. Please, do not put ideas in her head. She is a pure soul guarded by the Maker and has no need of these earthly concerns.”

Jane blinked. “Varric? Could you just offer what… I think you’ve been offering for all the other ones?”

Karl was a good man. So good, in fact, that he didn’t even hesitate to catch Jim as he fainted.

Jane wasn’t exactly sure what her supposed request to all those noble houses entailed, but she had a feeling it was something that only really mattered to nobles and had very little to do with Varric serving as her walking checkbook. It wasn’t like Varric was buying her expensive things he couldn’t afford. Just little odds and ends borrowed from various farmers and merchants around Haven that she put to use in service to the Inquisition. So whatever she had told Varric to offer Sterling’s owner couldn’t be that serious, otherwise, Varric wouldn’t have started offering it in the first place.

Whatever it was, Jim was just being a worrywart. It was fine.

Varric grinned. “And so, I find myself an elected representative of House Smythe. Funny how that works.”

Cullen pressed his thumbs between his eyebrows and attempted to smooth the pain away. Anything that had Jane’s name attached to it was bound to be a headache waiting to happen. Further, any time Varric saw fit to be the messenger and came to Cullen first was a curse and not a blessing. “If I asked you to turn around and pretend we never had this conversation, would you?”

“Not on your life.” Instead of leaving, Varric put his boots up on Cullen’s desk and got comfortable. “You see, you’re her appointed caretaker and Gardenia has business with you.”

“Maker’s breath, is this about-”

“The Lady Jeanmarie Smythe would like to offer the support of her name and house, in return for… your horse.” Varric looked like a cat who had gotten the cream and canary besides. “And if that isn’t enough, she’s willing to consider any and all offers for the more traditional noble bits.”

His head hurt and Cullen wished he was the sort of man who could drink his problems away. “Dare I ask what part you play in this?”

“Well, I couldn’t just idly sit by and let the poor girl worry herself sick over all those poor ponies of hers. And this way I get to see the look on your face when you figure out that your lady wants your horse more than she wants you.”

“There’s always something more, isn’t there?” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Am I to start bowing when she enters the room?”

The dwarf snorted. “No, but a little bit of courtesy wouldn’t hurt the rest. We’re supposed to think she’s a lady, not some weird bird mage we picked up from a farm right by a Rift. You know, like a demon. The same kind of demon that’s sitting in the back of her head and waiting to eat us all for breakfast.”

“Maker’s breath, must you remind me every time we speak?”

“Have you figured out how to get rid of it? Something that doesn't involve keeping her so drugged up that she can’t remember what she did yesterday? No? Then yes, I’m going to remind you every time we talk.” That unknown and terrifying demon was the reason why Varric purposefully only had conversations with Cullen when Jane wasn’t around. No one wanted to know what would happen if Jane remembered that ill-fated moment where the demon had almost won, least of all Varric.

“You forget that the girl has no idea what her life has become. But you all seem to have no issue with using her to benefit the Inquisition. The least I can do is find her a connection all her own when you’re done squeezing her dry.” He folded his hands over his stomach and leaned the chair back until it balanced on its back legs. “So, Commander. Want to put your name in the hat for our fair Jane’s hand in blissed matrimony? I want to see some baby birds flying around before I die of old age. Entrance fee’s your horse.”

Varric gave Cullen migraines when he brought up the concept of Jane as an abomination. As far as Varric knew, this was the best path open to them. The option that Leliana had offered him was a legend, little more than a tiny glimmer of hope in the darkness. Who could possibly know where the Litany of Adralla had ended up after the Hero of Ferelden had finished with it?“Have you bothered to ask the lady what she wants? If this is the course she wants to take?”

The dwarf gave him a slow smile and spread out his hands, shrugging idly. “Does she have a choice? Nightingale and Ruffles painted a target on her back. The least I can do is make sure that the result of it is something she can live with.”

Orlesian nobles ran the gamut from old and lecherous to young and irresponsible, and there wasn’t a single one that would consider Jane’s desires over their own. They would see her to an Orlesian Circle the day a single one discovered she was a mage, and her head would roll in the same breath that the demon in her reared its head.

He had made her a promise.

Cullen sighed.

“I gave my word, Varric. What she wills, at any cost. Sterling is hers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [There's a Discord.](https://discord.gg/THDKVDhzga)
> 
> [There's a Pinterest.](https://www.pinterest.com/mirrordaltokki/canary/)
> 
> [There's a Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Ch2wTvIT0nNZuv727YkJo)
> 
> For everything else, there's a comment section below.


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